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Vampires, oo'd 'ave 'em? C4 would, with Joe Ahearne's unique series. Jon Hamblin remembers it well
In the cold of the night they'll come looking for you. Stalking you through the streets of London, through the slums and the squats and the back alleys. They'll hung you down, and when they find you, they'll put a carbon bullet into your chest cavity, and watch you burn. They are T-Branch, the shady Government and Vatican-sanctioned unit tasked with your eradication. And you're a Code V – a leech, a plague carrier, a vam… well let's just stick with Code V, shall we? Brace yourself. Things could get bloody.
Detective Sergeant Mike Colefield (Jack Davenport) is T-Branch's latest recruit; an ordinary copper forced to "neutralize" his best friend Jack (Stephen Moyer) when he "crosses over". Also in the squad is ex-soldier Vaughn (Idris Elba), Dr Angie March (Susannah Harker) and head honcho Father Pearce Harman (Philip Quast). Together, they're slowly drawn into a conspiracy involving the Government, the Church, and a biological infection that could end humanity as we know it.
Considering the concept has been committed to screen so many times in the last century it's surprisingly difficult to do something new with vampires. While there have been successful attempts to break out of the gothic mould, most of them merely rely on a change of setting to freshen up the corpse. Writers hope that simply moving the undead, witness protection-style, to a Californian high school or a deep south bayou will provide enough contrast to appear fresh; or at least as fresh as a dentally challenged cadaver can be. But few shows have managed to shake off the faint whiff or campiness that surrounds the vampire myth, the romantic inflections and supernatural suppositions that abound when you talk of life after death.
Ultraviolet was different though. It took its inspiration not from its location, but from real life. Or, to be more precise, This Life, the gritty late '90s show that attempted to show modern lives with all their rough edges and scars. When Ultraviolet was broadcast as six 50-minute episodes by Channel 4 in 1998, sci-fi, particularly home-grown sci-fi, was out, and sexy shows like This Life and Queer as Folk, featuring young urban professionals diddling each other, were in. Instead of kicking against the climate, Ultraviolet cuddled up to it, adopting the perceived edgy realism of these shows, even going as far as poaching Jack Davenport, the star of This Life, for its lead. The show's genre leanings were masked behind an emphasis on personal problems and professional jargon.
Indeed, the word "vampire" isn't ever used on the show (like most government departments T-Branch use code-words for their profiling) and a vampire is simply a Code V (as in five). By grounding his show in our world so completely, creator (and writer/director of all six episodes Joe Ahearne (ho had previously worked on This Life) was able to create one of the most thoughtful and original British sci-fi shows in years, and one that has still yet to be bettered – even by him.
EERIE ATMOSPHERE
Aherne realized that vampirism is so conceptually far-fetched that audiences can usually only relate to it as fantasy or escapism. By treating it as a biological, rather than supernatural affliction, he created an eerie, realistic atmosphere unmatched by almost any other treatment of the myth (with the possible exception of George Romero's chilling '70s shoker Martin). Part of the show's magic was in taking the tired old conventions of the vampire legends and reinventing them – by following them through to their logical conclusion. How would you fight an enemy that casts no reflection, and can't be recorded on any equipment? Guns mounted with video cameras, perhaps? Arming T-Branch operatives with stakes would be a bit unwieldy, but what about bullets made from carbon? Or tear gas grenades filled with allacin, the active ingredient in garlic? Infectious bites can be neutralized with lasers, but as for crosses and holy water, as Dr March puts it: "It's a bit like homeopathy – it's a question of faith on both sdieds. They can be superstitious too, you know."
Superstitious they may be, but they're also well prepared. Code Vs have to communicate across distances using voice synthesisers, because telephones don't work for them. They have UV-shielded windows in their cars. They are obsessed with curing blood diseases to ensure the purity of their food supply. They travel in time-locked coffins, to avoid accidental immolation (which leads to one of the show's stand out sequences). Cunningly the vamps recruit extremely selectively, taking nuclear scientists rather than blonde bimbos. Stripping out the gothic elements – the castles, the capes and the pointy teeth, and replacing them with earnest pseudo-science really opened up the storytelling possibilities.
During the series, the "leech" disease is used to hold a mirror up to the "hot-button" issues of the day, without resorting to lazy clichés like parallels to drug addiction or Aids. Instead, themes like environmentalism, abortion and paedophilia are dealt with, while Gulf War Syndrome, the Great Fire of London and the Congregation for the doctrine of Faith (better known as the Inquisition) are also weaved into its rich mythos. It's a testament to the show's non-sensational treatment that these topics were not only handled sensitively, but imaginatively – the sunlight averse paedophile for example, doesn't turn out to be a vampire, but a pawn for an un-aging Lost Boy. But twisting preconceptions and prejudices, the show constantly throws up unexpected turns, filled with moments that almost demand that the chin be stroked in appreciation.
Ahearne also managed to pull of an extremely satisfying plot arc, slowly tying the seemingly episodic stories into a cohesive whole. The trick works because the arc story seems to revolve around Mike's friend Kirsty, and her attempts to find out what happened to her fiancé Jack, who jilted her at the altar, while the individual episodes seem more concerned with investigating unrelated (albeit interesting) cases. But it's actually classic misdirection; the cases are connected, and they ultimately reveal a much larger game plan; one that you'll kick yourself for not spotting sooner.
FULL OF QUALITY
But despite the wealth of great ideas, the well-realised arc and the smart writing and direction, the whole affair is really sold by the great acting. Davenport shows that he's got more in him than playing smug sarcastic gits and Susannah Harker also wrings real emotion from her portrayal of a doctor forced to break her Hippocratic oath with a clip full of 9mm carbon bullets. Idris Elba displays the slightly world-weary charisma that he also exuded as Stringer Bell in HBO's The Wire, and manages to put a few interesting wrinkles in a character that could easily have been another ex-military man cliché. Idris wasn't the only actor on the show to get picked up by the prestigious US cable channel – Stephen Moyer's cocky turn as Jack was his first attempt at a vampire before finding fame as southern gentleman Bill Compton in the HBO's True Blood.
While the show garnered fairly solid ratings and reviews, a follow-up series never materialized, largely because (according to Joe anyway) Channel 4 never asked for one. Despite going on to direct episodes of Doctor Who and co-creating the spooky Apparitions, Ahearne has never entirely ruled out going back – indeed a show set ten years on could be a really exciting prospect. Having weaved modern history into the first series so well, it would be fascinating to see the banking collapse of last year and other modern catastrophes as part of the Code V's dark plans for humanity. While British sci-fi has reached a new peak of popularity, thanks to shows like Torchwood, Doctor Who and Being Human, surely we're not the only ones who'd like to see more shows like Ultraviolet – intelligent genre fiction that you can really sink your teeth into.
© Future Publishing Limited
