Hammer horror re-runs were my first experience of vampires (for me Christopher Lee will always be Dracula). I don't know why vampires made more of an impact than Frankenstein or Mummies or Werewolves but I'm not alone - you only have to compare the number of movies made on the subject. It's not just the blood and sex that makes vampires so compelling - not only can anyone become victim to the vampire, any of us can become one.

Ultraviolet came about when I was trying to come up with an idea for a TV series which wasn't cops or docs or lawyers. I wanted to see something different, a subject that doesn't usually get tackled on British TV drama. I'd written a couple of vampire ideas before but as one-offs - this time I thought I'd have a go at a series.

It occurred to me that nothing much had been done to update the vampire myth. Hammer did it with the last couple of Dracula films in the early Seventies but only by transporting the character himself. Vampire hunters still went around with holy water and crosses - nothing really had changed. In the Eighties I'd seen movies which used contemporary settings but never really treated the vampires themselves with much seriousness. Vampires had become camp. I thought about taking one logical step - what if vampires really existed?

Suppose it were possible to strip away all the tongue in cheek which had overlain the myth through endless repetition. What if they really did exist? How would we fight them? Science would be the weapon, not superstition. Stakes and garlic do work but it's the chemicals inside - carbon and allicin that are the key. Daylight kills them because it's ultraviolet radiation they can't withstand. Religion is uncertain and no defence. The vampires have their own technology too - cars with tinted windows - hi-tech caskets for transatlantic transport. And as quickly as we design countermeasures - like laser treatment for bite wounds - they're developing ways of infecting us that don't even involve biting. The myth ceases to become about one vampire being hunted - this is a war.

Vampires are immortal and take a very long view. With the threat of global warming, AIDS and CJD, their food source is under threat. Up until now, vampires have allowed humans to roam free, in the future they want to control us. It's not just the technology that's updated. Vampires are supposed to be evil but evil is a difficult concept for modern man to deal with. Vampires are intelligent and persuasive. Do we have the right to kill them without question? Especially when they may look like old friends, family or lovers. In the investigations our heroes undertake, there's the risk they may lose their own humanity without ever becoming vampires.

Joe Ahearne - Writer and Director

< back