Ultraviolet - Complete Series (2 Disc Set) [DVD] [1998]

The series features Jack Davenport (of "This Life" fame to UK viewers) who becomes curious as to why his best friend is behaving strangely (including ditching his bride at the alter) after which he is recruited to, and somewhat reluctantly joins, a branch of the special services (known as CIB) which deals with incidences concerning "Code 5" infections. In CIB Mike (Davenport) joins forces with Vaughn (Idris Elba) & Angela March (Susannah Harker) under the leadership of the quiet priest Pearse (Philip Quast) to combat the leeches but, to do so, he must abandon previous acquaintances and start a new life (which explains some of his reluctance) which is made difficult by his best friend's ex Kirstie (Colette Brown) who is remarkably persistent at trying to find out what has happened to her fiancé and why Mike is behaving so strangely.

The vampires are sophisticated and use scams, frauds, and other techniques to acquire money and thus work within the human economic system as well as investigating the "pollution" or "contamination" of their food supply by carrying out experiments of the kind the Nazi's would have been proud of ... they also claim that they are persecuted & hunted down by church run death squads (if you'll excuse the cynicism it is not, after all, as if the church has no previous expertise in this area).

Joe Ahern, who wrote & directed the series (ably aided by a fine production team one of whom I know personally), investigates a number of issues over the all too short course of the series such as the nature of the vampire "race", whether they possess souls as do humans (bearing in mind this is fiction), whether they are out to dominate us, whether they should have some kind of right to feed off us and whether they should be treated as some kind of ethnic minority rather than simply hunted down and executed. Not, according to this series, that they can ever be truly killed as once terminated the powdery remains of the vampires are sealed in tubes and locked in a vault that is referred to as a prison by it's human keepers.

In terms of Extras the DVD set is somewhat let down as there is just a PC screensaver, some weblinks, trailers, still photographs & biographies ... there are no featurettes or commentaries or anything that turns a good DVD set (that this is) into a truly excellent one. That said, in Ultraviolet, Ahern brings as a sharply written script, with some cynical humour, morality issues & conspiracies and he does so with style. Ultimately Ultraviolet is a slick psychological thriller and Channel 4 manages to live up to its usual reputation of producing or buying a quality series ...

i watched it, transfixed, for the whole 6 episodes. and at the end i was crying out for more!!

it amazes me that no one "influential" saw the potential in this series and didnt make it a movie or at least another series!

i know i am not the only one who will sorely miss it. R.I.P ultaviolet