Amazon.com video review:
In a new twist on an old theme, the coolly stylish British miniseries Ultraviolet brings vampires into the 21st century, though the word vampire is never uttered in this mix of The X-Files and somber British TV mysteries like Touching Evil. Jack Davenport is a police detective who stumbles into an elite government agency when his partner and best friend suddenly becomes a nocturnal thug and bites him on the neck. Davenport reluctantly cuts off his old friends and lovers to join the team, which includes Idris Elba as a merciless ex-soldier and Susannah Harker as a medical researcher, and investigate a web of counterfeiting operations, banking scams, and experimental labs featuring human guinea pigs. "What they're researching is pollution: contamination of their blood supply," offers team leader and former priest Philip Quast, but the question remains: are they soulless monsters out to conquer mankind, or a persecuted minority who just want to live in peace with the humans?
Writer-director-creator Joe Ahearne brings all the traditional vampire tropes up to date; not only do they lack reflections in a mirror, but they don't show up on video and their voices don't carry over phone lines or record on audio tapes ("which makes surveillance a bitch"). Sunlight burns like an acid, and when they die they go up like a flare, leaving a pile of ash in their wake. But it's the sharp character writing, moral quandaries, and ingenious twists of this smart, stylish conspiracy thriller that make this series gripping down to the final episode.
The two-disc DVD set features an audio interview with Ahearne along with episode synopses and character notes. --Sean Axmaker
Amazon.com video review:
In the six-part British miniseries Ultraviolet, we discover
that ultraviolet light is used (both in surgery and via high-tech
weaponry) to identify people who have been infected with a disease
labeled "Code V." It's transmitted via a bite to the neck, but at no
point in the series is the word vampire used. Instead, in the
second episode ("In Nomine Patris") the nickname "Leech" is
introduced. We learn that it was this disease that was responsible for
the fire of London, and that one in 20 people are already infected. In
the opening episode, policeman Michael Colefield (Jack Davenport) is
recruited into the secretive Complaints Investigation Bureau. He meets
its introverted priest-chief Pearse (Philip Quast), the emotionally
driven Dr. Angela March (Susannah Harker), and the bullish heavyweight
Vaughan (Idris Elba). Spinning around Mike's suddenly complicated life
are his best friend's jilted fiancée (Colette Brown) and an old
flame (Fiona Dolman). In later hard-hitting episodes we see the
stabbing murder of a teacher-priest by a 12-year-old boy ("Mea Culpa")
and the capture of a Leech ("Persona Non Grata"). This intriguing
series ends having tied together most of its threads, but dangles
worrying implications at the viewer... not so much to suggest a sequel
as to hammer home everything at stake. It played in America on the Sci
Fi Channel. --Paul Tonks
