'Ultraviolet', which ran for only one series on UK television, was perhaps a victim of its scheduling, late at night on Channel 4, at times when a large audience would be unlikely to be watching.
It's a story about vampires and those who pursue them, without ever using the word - otherwise known as Code Five (V). Michael (Jack Davenport) finds himself sucked into the death squad when his friend disappears on the eve of his wedding. It's a stark choice - join them and do as they do, or find himself destroyed.
Each episode can almost stand alone, as they deal with specific cases which do not link together - the lawyer who desperately needs a baby, the psychotic schoolboy, the bloodsucking journalist. The eclectic cast (Susannah Harker,Idris Elba, Philip Quast, Colette Brown, Fiona Dolman ... and probably best of all, Corin Redgrave) are all on top form and extremely believable.
Until the last episode there is not a wrong note. The atmosphere is suitably dark and foggy, the characters are full of failings, and the vampires become more and more oppressive and menacing. It veers between being quite an intellectual puzzle, and a straightforward horror chiller. The ending is ambiguous, possibly deliberately so, but seems a bit of an anticlimax ... as if the series was building to deliver some other conclusion, but pulled back at the last moment.
A unique series, then, and a real shame that no second series was commissioned, leaving so many questions unanswered: what happened to Michael and Kirsty? did the priest really wish to cross over? what happened to the other resurrected Code V's in the boxes which came off the plane? would the little girl grow up to be, genetically, a killer?
It's a story about vampires and those who pursue them, without ever using the word - otherwise known as Code Five (V). Michael (Jack Davenport) finds himself sucked into the death squad when his friend disappears on the eve of his wedding. It's a stark choice - join them and do as they do, or find himself destroyed.
Each episode can almost stand alone, as they deal with specific cases which do not link together - the lawyer who desperately needs a baby, the psychotic schoolboy, the bloodsucking journalist. The eclectic cast (Susannah Harker,Idris Elba, Philip Quast, Colette Brown, Fiona Dolman ... and probably best of all, Corin Redgrave) are all on top form and extremely believable.
Until the last episode there is not a wrong note. The atmosphere is suitably dark and foggy, the characters are full of failings, and the vampires become more and more oppressive and menacing. It veers between being quite an intellectual puzzle, and a straightforward horror chiller. The ending is ambiguous, possibly deliberately so, but seems a bit of an anticlimax ... as if the series was building to deliver some other conclusion, but pulled back at the last moment.
A unique series, then, and a real shame that no second series was commissioned, leaving so many questions unanswered: what happened to Michael and Kirsty? did the priest really wish to cross over? what happened to the other resurrected Code V's in the boxes which came off the plane? would the little girl grow up to be, genetically, a killer?