n life--and death--things aren't always as they seem. It's hard enough for police detective Michael Colefield (Davenport) to accept that his fellow officer and best friend, Jack, is on the take. It's even harder to believe what a mysterious agency called the CIB is telling him, that Jack is a "Code Five" (Code V), a creature of the night—a vampire. Mike learns the hard way that all this is true, but he learns it well, so well, in fact, that CIB recruits him for its cause.
What Mike then learns is that, in a war like the one of which he's now a part, personal loss is often what drives the combatants. All of CIB's leaders have lost someone or something near and dear to them because of Code Vs--Vaughan Rice (Elba) lost his fellow soldiers in the Gulf, Pearse Harman (Quast) lost his life in the priesthood, Dr. Angela March (Harker) lost her husband and daughter. And while Mike's already lost Jack, he's perhaps even more afraid of losing Jack's former fiancée, Kristy, who makes Mike's still waters run deep but who's also been asking entirely too many questions since Jack left her standing at the altar.
And there's even more cause for Mike to doubt his decision to join the fight—the Code Vs are claiming that they're searching for a peaceful solution to the warring, that all of their research on and experiments with human diseases and environmental devastation are aimed at uniting the two sides, not dividing them. Besides, it's not as if they bring anyone over to their side who doesn't come of their own free will.
Are good and evil as simple as black and white? Is Michael even on the right side? Whatever the answers to these questions are, one thing's for certain—Mike's going to have to stay alive long enough to find out.
A British invasion that sucks
It's certainly a good time to be a vampire fan. Between all the books, movies and TV shows out there, lovers of the dark creatures can't want for either quality or quantity. Throw Ultraviolet on the pile as another delectable treat.
Originally a six-part British television miniseries which aired in the United Kingdom in 1998, Ultraviolet has made its way across the Atlantic for a few airings on the SCI FI Channel and now onto video. It's a series that's got a bit of everything, which is not to say that any one of its elements ever gets either underfed or jaundiced. Combined with plenty of cool, modern-day vampire science-fiction (i.e., high-tech) concepts found in the likes of Blade is strong character-relationship development as found in the likes of Buffy and Angel. And while it doesn't have quite as much action as the above-mentioned examples, Ultraviolet does also make a darned good cop show.
Some audiences may find that parts of individual episodes can occasionally drag a bit (the first episode actually takes quite a while to get up to speed); and combine Davenport's substantial English accent with a penchant for mumbling, and non-British viewers might find themselves reaching for the rewind button many a time. On the whole, though, the acting, directing and writing in every one of these hour-long episodes are truly fantastic; all of the smart and compelling individual stories are woven into the series' engrossing, overarching narrative in an extremely adept manner.
Viewers of the (two-disc) DVD version can also "explore and unlock top-secret Code V data," which includes episode summaries, personnel files, the "UV Dictionary" and an (audio-only but extensive) interview with Ultraviolet creator Joe Ahearne.
The only other criticism that might be leveled at Ultraviolet is that there's not enough of it. In the world the series creates, there's definitely room for more stories. There is word out there that an American version of the show may come on the air some time in the relatively near future, but the question remains whether such a version would have the same vitality of the original series or if it would be transformed into some hideous, unholy version of its former self.
