“When
your best friend suddenly
becomes a stranger and dark and
mysterious happenings signal
bloodthirsty creatures on the rampage,
perhaps it’s time to rethink your
beliefs — as a Police Detective
discovers in Ultraviolet, Channel 4’s
gripping modern-day vampire drama
from the 1990’s...”
FOLLOWING THE MURDER OF INFORMER Pollard (Ronnie Letham), Detective Sergeant
Michael Colefield (Jack Davenport: Smash) discovers that his best friend
Jack Berrisford (Stephen Moyer: True Blood), whom he believed to be safely
asleep in Mike's apartment the night before his wedding to Kirsty (Collette
Brown: Doctors; Holby City), has disappeared. This is just the beginning
of a nightmare world in which he must kill or be killed.
“Ultraviolet
is a different
take on the vampire
story with great storylines that keep you
hooked, a likeable cast
and a cleverly
constructed thrill
factor...”
When
Jack fails to show for his wedding, Michael realises that something is very
wrong — especially when two officers supposedly from the CIB (Police
Complaints Investigating Bureau), scientist and former medical research doctor
Angela March (Susannah Harker: Waking The Dead; Intimacy) and soldier
Vaughn Rice (Idris Elba: Luther; The Wire), who was retired after the
Gulf War with Post Traumatic Stress, turn up and are looking for Jack.
Jack apparently had an offshore account Kirsty and Michael were unaware of,
with a suspicious £58,000 in it — and it looks as though he was
involved in some sort of illegal dealing. Michael and Kirsty, who has turned
to Michael for comfort, are both devastated that Jack has let her down and unable
to believe that someone they knew so well could be so devious.
Despite Michael's determination not to believe his long-standing best friend
capable of wrongdoing, he is forced to question everything he believes in when
faced with the horrifying proof that Jack has been infected with a virus that
is turning the population into blood-sucking vampires.
Michael, despite his reluctance, is drawn in to the shadowy world of the undead,
working for a covert government unit that tracks down and destroys Code V infected
humans — and Jack is one of the hunted.
In this nightmarish world of vampires, Michael at first struggles to understand
exactly what is happening. With his life in danger at every turn, he tries to
hide the truth from Kirsty as he deals with the consequences of the job and
discover the vampires' agenda.
Head of the vampire hunting team is Catholic priest Pearse J Harman (Philip
Quast: The Devil's Double; Clubland), who runs The Congregation of the
Doctrine of the Faith, which is associated with the Catholic Church.
As Pearse considers becoming infected with the Code V virus to offer a way out
of his non-Hodgkins lymphoma, Angela is coming to terms with the deaths of both
her husband Robert and one of her twin daughters after they became infected
with the virus. She will soon have a very difficult decision to make.
Mike enlists the help of his former girlfriend Frances (Fiona Dolman), who works
in security, and he cannot help wondering if Jack was right when he said the
vampires had a right to life and were not all bad. Is he really on the right
side or is there something he has yet to discover?
Armed with special automatic hand guns and submachine guns with carbon bullets
and using sights that include video cameras to help them identify the vampires
from humans — the vampires have no reflection and do not appear
on film — the team investigates all reported incidences of vampire
activity.
Cases include a woman who appears to be carrying a vampire child, medical experiments,
a man who is being used to test synthetic blood for vampires, an outbreak of
a vampire-related disease at a school and a road rage incident where a woman
is left crippled.
Further cases involve a lady barrister working on a complex fraud case who is
attacked, only to be saved by a mystery person and a young boy, determined to
become a priest but suddenly beginning to act out of character, whose classmates
are afraid of sunlight.
The bloodsucking humanoids are not actually referred to as vampires, only as
having been infected by Code V, and religious symbols do not phase them. This
is not the Dracula of old; these creatures have been infected with a virus that
has turned them from humans into vampires.
With a sterling cast and nail-biting episodes, Ultraviolet is British
Sci-fi at its best. The series goes from strength to strength; Ultraviolet is
a different take on the vampire story with great storylines that keep you hooked,
a likeable cast and a cleverly constructed thrill factor.
Released by Channel 4 in the UK in 1998, Ultraviolet also features: Thomas
Lockyer as Jacob; Corin Redgrave as Dr Paul Hoyle; and Elizabeth Earl as Angie's
Daughter.
Music Composed and Performed by Sue Hewitt; Cinematography by Peter Greenhalgh;
Produced by Bill Shapter; and Series Created, Written and Directed by Joe Ahearne.
*
Dark
forces are at work in Ultraviolet, the gripping modern-day vampire drama
that aired on Channel 4 (6 episodes) in the late 1990s to rave reviews and comes
to DVD, courtesy of Mediumrare Entertainment, on 22 April 2013. Running Time:
300 Minutes on 2 Discs | Catalogue Number: FHED3018 | RRP: £19.99. Special Features
include: Brand new retrospective of the making of Ultraviolet.
"Ultraviolet is a different take on the vampire story with great storylines
that keep you hooked, a likeable cast and a cleverly constructed thrill factor"
—Maggie Woods, MotorBar
"A
dark stylish vampire thriller for The X-Files generation" —
Daily Mail
“When
your best friend suddenly