Ultraviolet [1998]

Horror, Sci-Fi

Jack Davenport
Susannah Harker

Director

Joe Ahearne

In the six-part British "vampire-slaying" mini-series Ultraviolet we discover that UV light is used (both in surgery and via high-tech weaponry) to identify people who have been infected with a disease labelled "Code 5". 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, these "Leeches", that were 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 CIB. 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 Kirstie (Colette Brown) and old flame Frances (Fiona Dolman). In later hard-hitting episodes we see a 12-year-old boy stab his teacher priest to death ("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. --Paul Tonks