n July 31, a mere two years after its debut in the United Kingdom, the British vampire miniseries Ultraviolet sinks its teeth into the SCI FI Channel. Written and directed by Joe Ahearne, whose other major credit is a 1996 BBC series called This Life, Ultraviolet brings the vampire myth into the genre of the criminal investigation miniseries. The six-hour storyline will unfold in two-hour chunks over the course of three nights.
Davenport, whom viewers might recognize from The Talented Mr. Ripley or Russell Mulcahy's Talos the Mummy, plays homicide detective Michael Colefield. When his partner (who, naturally, has been leading a double life as a bloodsucking vampire) disappears, Colefield suspects something is up. His investigation leads him to a vampire-hunting group (created long ago with Vatican approval, no less) called "The Squad." Led by a literal father figure--Catholic priest Pearse Harman (Quast)--the Squad fights a secret war of subterfuge and containment against the world's organized vampire society. Leaving the police behind, Colefield soon joins the Squad full-time as a roving vampire investigator. Together with reluctant partners Dr. Angie March (Harker) and Vaughan (Elba), Colefield uncovers a series of vampire plots that present him with separate dilemmas while simultaneously feeding the vampires' ultimate goals.
The characters all have quite a few personal problems, too. For one, Colefield's got to deal with his feelings for his partner's wife, who has taken up with a seedy journalist who may be more than he seems. March has already lost a husband to the vampire war and must raise a daughter alone while acting as the team's medical and forensics expert. She's also treating the leader of the Squad for cancer, a dilemma that makes the priest question his very beliefs--and makes vampiric immortality increasingly enticing.
Call it "Prime Suck-spect"
It's apparent that writer/director Ahearne wants to bring some inventive ideas to the tried-and-true vampire genre. Garlic and holy water, for instance, can indeed harm a vampire--but only if the vampire believes in such superstition as strongly as its attacker. The Squad is instead armed with guns that fire carbon bullets ("stakes") that can kill the "leeches." The guns come with nifty video-screen attachments that allow the hunters to separate fiend from friend; after all, vampires don't show up on film. The sense of mysterious history and church intrigue surrounding the Squad offers many story possibilities; clever scientific touches (like a vampire embryo that doesn't register on ultrasound) lend a realistic air to the proceedings.
Unfortunately, Ahearne seems torn between going for an all-out vampire thriller and something that can best be described as a jumble of Prime Suspect and The X-Files. This manifests partly because in the U.K. this show was considered a "series"; whereas, in the United States, it's a "miniseries" that had to be repackaged to fit the format. It's obvious that each two-hour installment of Ultraviolet consists of two one-hour episodes, although the final installment flows better than the first two. Story arcs intended to unfold over weeks become redundant when crammed into three two-hour blocks, and the "vampire of the week" stories feel rushed and confused. The pacing isn't helped by long philosophical debates between thinly drawn characters on the nature of disease, immortality, vampires and marriage (to name but a few subjects).
Ultraviolet leaves ample plot threads dangling, although after two years of relative obscurity, a sequel to this series seems unlikely. At one point Fox was developing a U.S. TV series based on Ultraviolet, but the project seems to have been put on the back burner. With the exception of Harker (who, strangely enough, is a direct descendant of the person upon whom Bram Stoker based Dracula's Jonathan Harker) none of the actors give particularly memorable performances. Will the vampires succeed in enslaving humanity, or are they really just misunderstood and persecuted? Who cares? Despite clever twists on vampire legends, this miniseries is best left out in the sun.
