12 Most Underrated TV Shows Ever
3. Ultraviolet
Irritatingly, there are no decent clips or trailers available online for this, Channel Four's answer to the X-Files in 1998. Starring a young Jack Davenport, and an even younger Idris Elba and Stephen Moyer, this moody update of the hoary old vampire mythology has the monsters electing to move with the times. Over the last few dozen years, humanity - their sole food supply - has gained the ability to destroy itself, and the apex predators cant have that Detective Sergeant Michael Colefield's best mate Jack is about to get married when he inexplicably disappears, and Mike's investigations lead him into conflict with a Vatican-sponsored paramilitary group who are also hunting Jack, and claim that he's been turned.
Mike finds himself recruited despite himself, all the while unconvinced that his new allies can be trusted. Are they what they say they are or a death squad? The v word is never mentioned in Ultraviolet - instead the team calls them Code 5, or leeches if they're off duty. Code 5's are, as usual, immortal, ageless and more or less indestructible - and they dont show up in mirrors, on film etc. In one of the many modern updates to the legends, they also cant be heard over the phone, requiring a voice synthesiser to speak. Wooden stakes have been supplanted by guns firing carbon bullets; guns with miniature digital camera screens attached, to better differentiate between human and monster.
Ultraviolet was a bit of a revelation when it first came out: a story that treated an age-old bit of horror folklore as a modern day conspiracy. Each of the six episodes took the form of a gritty, clever procedural, as the team investigated a new iteration on the old myth, each storyline revealing a new piece of the leeches overall master plan. It was brilliant, dynamic stuff, especially in the penultimate episode when Elbas brooding squaddie Vaughn Rice is knocked out and wakes up in a locked warehouse, surrounded by four coffins with timelocks ticking down the five minutes until sunset...