<\/p>\n
Ultraviolet<\/em>. In 1998, this British series carefully carved Ultraviolet<\/em> opens with down on his luck cop Michael Colefield, The vampires, meanwhile, aren’t your usual cup of blood.<\/p>\n Of the vampire genre, there are very few movies or shows that treat The upcoming movie goes ahead and gets it over with – “a story about What sets the Ultraviolet<\/em> vamps apart from the stereotype is These are the dark servants of evil, but they have a very modern Unlike many of these one-hit-wonder Brit shows, it’s a little unstable In the case of Ultraviolet<\/em>, I’ll go back on my theory: All of those wonderful little unexplored touches are long gone as far Hey, stop me when it sounds really horrible, okay?<\/p>\n I don’t know when the film is due.\u00a0 It says “in 2005.”\u00a0 But, I have it, of course, and three blank CDR’s along with a postage paid
\nout a toehold in cult TV, but failed to gather enough fans to justify a
\nsecond run.\u00a0 Since then, the creepy and off beat tale of a
\nreligiously-funded, above the law, Vampire extermination squad has
\ngathered enough new fans to justify the 2005 Milla Jovavich vehicle of
\nthe same name.\u00a0 Since the upcoming Hollywood version of Ultraviolet<\/em>
\nis nothing like the original, I feel it’s my duty to bring to light the
\nobscure series that will be left by the wayside in favor of a dizzy
\ntwo-hour uber-Buffy<\/em> fest starring everyone’s favorite scantily clad, well-armed waif.<\/p>\n
\nplayed by Michael Davenport who went on from vampire hunter to take the
\nlead in Coupling<\/em> and land on the map as the snooty Brit in Pirates of the Caribbean<\/em>.
\nHis quest to solve the mystery of his partner’s disappearance gets him
\ndrummed off the force and lands him in “Section T,” a branch of the
\ngovernment that answers to no Earthly law.\u00a0 Headed by the dour
\nFather Pearse Hobson, played by the excellent Philip Quast (who had
\nabout two minutes of purest comedy on Police Squad! back in 1984) and
\nstaffed by an elite team of gun toting maniacs, Section T exists for
\none purpose:\u00a0 To hunt down and destroy a sub-culture of
\nvampires.\u00a0 It’s all out war between the church and this community
\nof bloodsuckers.\u00a0 Davenport is the cop with a conscious, Quast the
\ndriven holy man who has that defrocked from the church sort of feeling
\nabout him, Susannah Harker is the strait-laced doctor and Idris Elba
\n(from TV’s The Wire<\/em>) is the hard-nosed ex special forces guy and token black man.<\/p>\n
\nthem a little bit differently…a little bit more Human.\u00a0 There is
\nonly one that successfully avoids calling them vampires at all –
\nWhitley Strieber’s The Hunger<\/em>, which has gone from novel to movie to TV show over the last couple of decades.\u00a0 In The Hunger<\/em>,
\nthe term “vampire” never came up in conversation or description, and
\nthe nature of the “vampires” was so far from the stereotype it was
\nrefreshing and powerful and is a must read\/watch no matter how bad the
\nwriting is.\u00a0 Ultraviolet<\/em> avoids the term, as well, though it seems a bit more forced.\u00a0 Ultraviolet<\/em>‘s
\nvampires are a bit more traditional in that they bite your neck and
\ncan’t take a stake through the heart (though Section T uses carbon
\nbullets from fancy guns).\u00a0 InThe Hunger<\/em>, you could just call them serial killers who live for quite a while.\u00a0 In Ultraviolet<\/em>,
\nthey’re immortal bloodsuckers who burst into flame when the sun hits
\nthem.\u00a0 So trying not to say the dreaded V-word for six episodes
\nsort of hangs in the air.<\/p>\n
\nvampires in the near future.”\u00a0 In the show, they’re “leeches” or
\n“Class Fives.”\u00a0 Five as in the roman numeral – “V.”
\nHo-ho.\u00a0 Amazing what you can do with that script when you spend
\nall night in the pub.<\/p>\n
\nthat they have a mission.\u00a0 It’s nothing magical.\u00a0 No special
\namulets or long lost master vampires.\u00a0 Their quest is to
\nexterminate Humanity and create a world of eternal darkness thanks to
\ngreenhouse gasses and nuclear winter.\u00a0 In preparation for this,
\nthey are researching a way to make artificial blood (this idea, by the
\nway, is stolen from Matheson’s “I Am Legend.”).\u00a0\u00a0 To do this,
\nthey have set out to gather the world’s leading scientists into their
\nfold, “just like the American’s did with the Manhattan Project.”<\/p>\n
\nmission, a very human approach to it and a cunning way of working into
\nour heroes heads.\u00a0 To work for Section T is to lose your life,
\neventually.\u00a0 Your loved ones are targets, your friends,
\neveryone.\u00a0 You must cut yourself off from the world and devote
\nyourself to the fanatical war against inhuman monsters who…when you get
\ndown to it, aren’t all that inhuman after all.\u00a0 Ultraviolet<\/em> is a terrorism parable, but it’s not really in your face, so don’t worry about it.<\/p>\n
\nin the six episode run.\u00a0 I’ve maintained that the abbreviated
\nseries style that the Brits have done is what makes their great hits
\ngreat.\u00a0 Take our favorite darling, The Office<\/em>.\u00a0 Now,
\nif that were a 22 episode series, you’d want to shit in the lungs of
\nthe writers.\u00a0 But as a quick snap, that brief 12 episode run, it’s
\nbrilliant.\u00a0 That’s a dying custom over on that funny little
\nisland, because they need to have normal-length series to sell to
\nAmerican TV.<\/p>\n
\nIt’s dying to be a regular series.\u00a0 The problems are clear.
\nThese four, complicated characters, this war between a supernatural
\nrace of immortals and a troubled little outfit of Crusaders, Michael
\nDavenport’s past life, past loves, and internal struggle with his new
\nposition: A lawman in a lawless world.\u00a0 It desperately needed more
\ntime.\u00a0 You barely get settled with the characters before the
\nseries is finished…and dead.\u00a0 Never to return.<\/p>\n
\nas the movie is concerned.\u00a0 Here’s the new plot:\u00a0 It’s the
\nlate 21st century.\u00a0 Genetically modified humans have
\n“vampire-like” traits giving them super human abilities.\u00a0 A civil
\nwar breaks out between normals and mutants.\u00a0 In the middle is an
\n“infected” woman – Milla Jovavich.\u00a0 Her name is Violet and she
\nmust protect a young boy who has been marked for death by the US
\ngovernment.<\/p>\n
\nbefore it’s all the rage, get the series into you.\u00a0 It’s six hours
\non DVD.\u00a0 It’s out there, but it’s tough to find.\u00a0 Netflix has
\nchosen not to carry it as part of their ongoing vampire bias (hey,
\nwhere’s Forever Knight<\/em>?) and I’ve yet to see it for rent.<\/p>\n
\nreturn envelope will get it to your doorstep.\u00a0 PM me on that
\none.\u00a0 Or, if you really want to be proactive, and you’re a Netflix
\naddict, nag the fuck out of them.\u00a0 Go here:\u00a0 http:\/\/www.netflix.com\/ContactUs<\/a> and select “Title Request.”\u00a0 Tell them to get Ultraviolet<\/em> and the Forever Knight<\/em> discs.\u00a0 If you do it once a week, they’ll lose their minds and add them to the catalog.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[352],"tags":[403,353,158],"class_list":["post-2554","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-gsarchive","tag-cult-culture","tag-gs-archive-2004-2008","tag-horror"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/greatsociety.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2554","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/greatsociety.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/greatsociety.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/greatsociety.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/greatsociety.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=2554"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/greatsociety.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2554\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2848,"href":"https:\/\/greatsociety.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2554\/revisions\/2848"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/greatsociety.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=2554"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/greatsociety.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=2554"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/greatsociety.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=2554"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}