Ultraviolet Tapped Into The Dark Potential of Vampires Like No Other Show on TV

In The Late Great, Primetimer staffers and contributors revisit shows that were cut short, but still cast a long shadow over the TV landscape.

Vampires never truly go out of style. Sure, they come and go as any trends do, but they always stick around for longer than their supernatural contemporaries. Unlike zombies or werewolves, there’s something flexible about the mythical bloodsucker, so easily moldable to fit the trends or concerns of any given time or context. Certainly, the vampires of TV have fit this role remarkably well over the decades, from the Gen X “us against the world” girl power of Buffy the Vampire Slayer to the sex-drenched queer soap opera of True Blood to crisis of faith amid small-town tensions in Midnight Mass. In 1998, a solid decade before sparkles took over the genre, a little-seen addition to the genre made vampires more political than ever.

Created and written by Joe Ahearne, who would go on to direct several episodes of Doctor Who, Ultraviolet premiered on Channel 4 in the UK. Known as the edgy broadcaster of the nation, Channel 4 had a reputation for pushing the boundaries and airing the kind of stuff that would never fly on the more conservative BBC. Ultraviolet felt like a good fit for its schedule, a homegrown adult-oriented supernatural drama nestled alongside headline-grabbing imports such as South Park and Ally McBeal. Billed as a British take on The X-Files, the series sadly came and went in the space of six episodes, disappearing from the schedule as Buffy began to air in the country for the first time. With flashier competition on the calendar and appointment viewing openly courting scandal, a slow-burn crime series about vampires that never once said the V word may have been too opaque for some.

Detective Sergeant Michael Colefield (Jack Davenport) is introduced to this dark new world when his best friend (a pre-True Blood Stephen Moyer) goes missing the day before his wedding. Investigating Jack's disappearance leads Mike into the den of Section 5, a secret paramilitary unit dedicated to hunting vampires. Their goal is simple and ruthless: kill all vampires, no exceptions, and that includes Jack. Initially loyal to his friend, Mike pushes back against the violent methods of the organization, but when he realizes that Jack is lying and vampires are real, he reluctantly joins the ranks of Section 5. Something far more nefarious is on the horizon and the battle between the living and the undead is about to go global.

In terms of style, Ultraviolet has more in common with cop dramas than anything more speculative. It's a grim and grey world, one seemingly forever overcast, blackened by the mood as much as the clouds. There are no wooden stakes or silver crosses to keep the vampires at bay here. Section 5 operates like Blackwater more than the Van Helsings, complete with guns and military raids ripped straight from primetime news. One of the group's main leaders, Vaughan Rice (Idris Elba), is a Gulf War veteran sealing with PTSD after seeing his entire squad turned by vampires. Another, Doctor Angela Marsha (Susannah Harker, complete with an extremely 1998 blonde bob), watched her husband kill himself and one of their children rather than become monsters. The leader of the organization, Pearse Harman (Philip Quast), is a priest who offers the closest thing Ultraviolet has to humor, but his relationship with God is one of wrath over peace as he mourns the murder of his son and deals with terminal cancer.

The vampires are never described as such, labelled as Code 5s (Vs in Roman numerals), although it’s clear what they are to everyone. While they’re stronger and faster than humans, they’re more likely to kill with a gun than their bare hands. They consume blood and can’t be seen in mirrors or on CCTV footage. Section 5 takes them down with garlic bombs, UV light, and carbon bullets. But we don’t see them unleashing fangs or engaging in anything especially spooky. Their business is very bureaucratic, driven by money and politics over faith or the monstrous. They don’t drain their prey and are very calculating in which humans they turn, with one human noting that “successful parasites don’t kill their host.” It all seems remarkably sophisticated, especially when compared to a military group who used to be part of the church’s bloodiest inquisitions. This is not a traditional battle of good versus evil. Humanity may be on the line but the show is ambivalent as to whether it’s worth the loss of our souls.

There’s a remarkable lack of allure to these vampires. They’re not suave or seductive. They’re conniving and power-driven, seemingly unflappable in the face of anything. What they seem to evoke more than appeal is trauma. Everyone who comes into contact with vampires, including Mike, is left in shreds afterwards, unable to forget the pain or get over the urge to destroy each and every vampire on Earth. They’re more like politicians than anything else, and what’s more dangerous than that, even without the bloodsucking?

Everything in Ultraviolet is played 100% seriously. The stakes are high and nobody is safe. In one episode, Vaughan is abducted by vampires and locked in a garage with four coffins timed to open at the same time. If he doesn't escape, Vaughan will face the same fate as his squad in Iraq. Elba reveals the crushing trauma of PTSD and being forced to relive the worst moment in your life, all tied to a ticking clock and a potential fate worse than death. It’s genuinely unnerving, even without the vampires, and stridently political. Aside from the Gulf War, Ultraviolet also delves into topics of police corruption, abortion, and genetic engineering.

This is a series that proudly leans into the idea of vampirism as a metaphor for human ills. Ahearne admitted that he made a "sort of unconscious" parallel between vampires and the political prisoners of Northern Ireland. In one episode, a vampire played by Corin Redgrave is kept in a police cell and protests his imprisonment by smearing blood across the walls. As Ahearne told The Companion, "When I heard the Provisional IRA talking about why they were doing what they were doing and having perfectly logical, from their point of view, arguments for blowing people up, that’s the kind of language the vampires used in Ultraviolet. They’re persuasive, they’ve got political aims, but it’s uncomfortable listening to that point of view because they kill people."

Most provocatively, Ultraviolet has the vampires win. Every investigation from the season builds to the ultimate reveal of the vampires' plans: They want to cause a nuclear winter, wipe out humanity, and live off synthetic blood, thus ensuring an eternity of their species' supremacy. The narrative ends with darkness looming overhead, the cruelty and nihilism of humans all for naught, as Mike feels utterly helpless. Even by vampire drama standards, this is a bleak tale. Alas, we were denied a second season that could have shown us how the dregs of humanity try to fight back against their new undead masters.

Ultraviolet was a show far ahead of its time, one that would have been better served by a TV landscape more willing to take genre fare and play it with the heft of intense true-to-life drama. Fox did try to remake it for American audiences but it was dumped quickly after its pilot episode. Its style and themes have only gotten more relevant thanks to the success of series like Game of Thrones, which emphasized how the fantastical can feel right at home among the mundane.

Vampires are coming back to the cultural fold, with a new Nosferatu adaptation on the way and series like What We Do in the Shadows breathing new life into familiar material. Yet these stories tend to be more comedic, like the Nicolas Cage film Renfield, or giddily action-crammed, such as The Last Voyage of the Demeter. The true soulless potential of vampirism remains widely untapped by TV aside from Ultraviolet. Perhaps it’s just too much to accept that darkness might win and deserve to do so.

Ultraviolet is streaming on Tubi.

Kayleigh Donaldson is a writer of film and pop culture features for Screen Rant and Pajiba. Also seen at SyFy Fangrrls and Bright Wall Dark Room.