“I WAS TOLD VERY CLEARLY, ‘Don’t talk about vampires!’” says Joe Ahearne, creator of Ultraviolet, a series that drove a sleek modern stake through the heart of the undead. “They said, ‘You’re not going to get this show off the ground if you talk about it like it’s an update of Hammer horror. They’re just not going to make that.’”
Tearing away the velvet and blood-spattered crinoline, Ultraviolet had no time for the classic gothic trappings of a vampire tale. Here was an edgy, metropolitan thriller, set against the bloodshot skies of London, where a government-sanctioned black ops team battled an immortal conspiracy against mankind. Broadcast by Channel 4 in late 1998, it felt perfectly timed for a country bristling with pre-millennial anxiety in the afterglow of Cool Britannia, on the countdown to Y2K.
“That was one of the selling points of the show,” reveals Ahearne, who wrote and directed all six episodes. “I had to pretend that it was a show about exactly that kind of angst. So in the storylines I bumped up certain things that Channel 4 could glom onto and say, ‘Oh yes, I see what you’re doing…’ I have to say it wasn’t my primary interest!
“We had a rejection before it was taken up by Channel 4, where the boss of the channel said, ‘I
