Nightflyers Review - Book to Big Screen to Small Screen

Nightflyers Review

Book to Big Screen to Small Screen

Nightflyers has had a special place in my heart since I first saw the 1987 movie some time in the 90s. It has spaceships and telepaths and telekinetics, so it hits many, many of my buttons where content is concerned. It also has Michael Praed as Royd Eris and Micheal Des Barres as Jon Winderman - 2 of my favourite 80s actors.

For many years I had no idea it was based on a novella, but when Game of Thrones came out and everyone was talking about George R.R. Martin I discovered it. Once again I enjoyed it, although not as much as the somewhat campy 80s film.

So when I heard that it was being remade for TV I was somewhat hesitant, especially given how I really don't like Game of Thrones. Hence, when it hit Netflix I didn't leap in immediately. However, I have to say that, mostly, my fears were unwarranted. Rob and I sat down to watch it and mainlined the first eight eps in one sitting, then went back for the final 2 last night.

The General Plot

The underlying plot of the story, and hence all 3 versions is, a group of explorers and scientists are investigating a space going entity called the Volcryn. Among their number is a powerful, slightly unstable telepath, who is supposed to help contact the entity if and when they find it. The ship is called the Nightflyer and her captain is a man named Roy(d) Eris who is very cagey about himself and his ship. The coordinator for the expedition is a genetically enhanced woman, and the scientist in charge is a man called D'Brannin. Things on the ship start going wrong and people start dying (what else would you expect from George R.R. Martin?).

The Novella

When it comes to the novella, I have to admit, I don't remember a huge amount of the details, I just remember it being close enough to the film to be satisfying, but different enough to be interesting, and that it ends with less finality. It's worth a read, but it did not stick in my brain. Hence this is about all I will be saying about it.

The 1987 Film

The 80s film is where my love of this franchise came from.

This is more of a grunge sci-fi than a shiny sci-fi, along the line of looking like Blade Runner rather than Star Trek. The Nightflyer is dark and industrial looking, except for the main lounge, and Royd appears as a somewhat scratchy hologram.

Michael Praed plays Royd, with his long 80s hair and dashing looks.

He's all mysterious and reserved, and fascinated by Miranda (Catherine Mary Stewart) the project coordinator.

The whole film is very, very 80s. Just look at Miranda (right) - can you get more 80s than mullet, shoulder pads and mirrored shades?

She is also the definition of "strong female character" as far as the 80s was concerned, in that she is stoic, strong, very, very fit and also a little bit mysterious.

And then there is Michael Des Barres as Jon Winderman, the unstable, often drunk telepath, who really doesn't seem to like anybody very much. As ever Michael Des Barres can be relied upon to be great as the character you know is going to go off the rails and be trouble at some point.

I always know I am going to enjoy a film if Michael Des Barres is in it, if not for just him.

Nightflyers is a movie that is going for dark and gritty and misses and ends up somewhere on the campy side. I love it, but it's definitely not high cinema. The characters are all somewhat stereotypes, but the actors seem to really enjoy themselves playing them, which comes across on the screen.

The plot moves fast, keeps us involved and entertained, and has enough gore and action to be exciting. It is sci-fi with a side of fantasy, because it pushes the whole telekinetic and telepathic parts a little too far too be scientific.

It is very much a movie that fit 80s sci-fi and, hence, I was somewhat confused as to how it could be remade thirty years later, let alone turned into a series.

The Series

As you can imagine the series differs from both the movie and the novella in some very significant ways, since it is basically going from a short tale format, to a longer story idea.

First big difference is the much bigger cast.

In the novella and the movie the Nightflyer is a ship with only one crew member: the captain, and the rest is run by computer.

In the series the ship has a whole crew, which gives the main cast so much more to play off of.

Roy Eris - Melantha Jhirl

Second difference from the movie - more diverse cast. Yay!

Third difference, it feels very much an ensemble cast with no one character being the main player. Different characters are important for different reasons. D'Branin is the impetuous behind the search for the Volcryn. Lommie is the somewhat naive heart of the team. Melantha is the strong, unshakeable team lead (to begin with at least). Roy is the mysterious, possibly dangerous captain. Rowan is the cynical but caring friend to D'Brainin. Etc, etc.

Roy Eris - Thale - Dr Agatha Matheson

Not gonna lie, my favourite character is Thale, the L1 telepath, and I very much like the conflict they introduced by making him quite so incompatible with other human beings at the beginning. It creates great conflict around him.

The work-around for this and how they move forward with his character is also beautifully done.

D'Branin, Rowan, Melantha, Auggie, Lommie

The whole look of the show is somewhere between shiny sci-fi and gritty sci-fi. This is not a ship that runs completely smoothly and is spotless like the Enterprise, but neither is is industrial grunge like many darker 80s efforts. It feels to me like someone took parts of the Nostromo from Alien and melded it with parts of the Enterprise and threw in some bits of a star destroyer for good measure.

There are habitat domes that remind me of Silent Running, a robot spider thing that makes me flash back to Tom Selleck's Runaway, and jacking into computers that starts off making me think cyberpunk, but moves a bit beyond that later on.

The ensemble cast means that the plot is never slow or boring, and all the characters have a development path that makes them more interesting. They are all very much not 2D.

Along the way there were a couple of eps that I found did not make a lot of sense in the scheme of things. It's the fact that there does not seem to be a why about them. I don't want to add spoilers to the main review, so I won't say what they were about, but there were two that stuck out as not like the others. One of them seemed to have nothing carried forward, and the other did have some consequences, but the reasons behind the plot of the ep just didn't hang together.

The ending was also a bit of a let down. It's clear they're going for a continuation, which left the end of this season not quite as exciting as the rest of it. Given that George R.R. Martin's name is associated with it, I will say, more people survived than I thought would ;).

There is one bit in the last ep that made me go "Seriously!" very loudly at the screen. I can't help wondering if it was a nod to Game of Thrones, but I also can't say anymore because that would be spoilers. If you see it, you'll know what I'm talking about.

Mostly I found it a very cohesive and well plotted season. Please tell me it has been renewed because it's ends on one hell of a cliff hanger and I want more.

One last thing: it made me so happy to see Josette Simon in Nightflyers because I got all sorts of Blake's 7 feelings seeing her in sci-fi again - I only ever seem to catch her in police procedurals. Mostly I kept thinking, ooh Dayna is playing Servalan :).

Have you seen the movie or the series, or read the book? What did you think?

~*~

Tasha's Patreon

become an Ally, Friend, Companion or Confidant for lots of exciting, exclusive content.

Review: Ghosts of Shepherdstown + Ch5 of Dead Before Dawn

Rob and I have been watching Ghosts of Shepherdstown this week and we really enjoyed it. It looks like reality TV, it's even listed as reality TV on IMDB, but if this isn't scripted, I'm Father Christmas.

The leads are playing themselves and at least one is a real paranormal investigator. The set-up is that they've been brought in by the Sheriff of Shepherdstown because he and his department are getting lots and lots of calls about paranormal activity, that they just can't cope with.

Bill Hartley, Elizabeth Saint, Nick Groff

Shepherdstown is supposed to be the most haunted town in the USA, but apparently the activity just ramped up considerably.

Throughout the six episodes the investigators take over from the police when the cops find no evidence that there are human perpetrators involved in six different cases, that all neatly link together. They have a psychic medium and a historian who help them investigate the cases and in each episode they see more and more paranormal activity.

There are recreations of ghostly happenings in the program as well as what we are supposed to believe are real paranormal activities filmed by the team. If the evidence were real there would be paranormal investigators swinging from the highest towers crowing about everything that had been found.

That said, it's a very enjoyable watch, put together well and is very spooky in places. It feels like a War of the Worlds type thing to me, fiction presented as fact to give us a good scare and it works.

If you like reality tv ghosts shows and some good ghost stories, then this is a great program to watch. Not sure what they'd do if they were renewed for a second season, but I'd tune in to see it if they did.

Have you seen Ghosts of Shepherdstown? What did you think?

~*~

It's Tuesday and that means it's new chapter time.

Chapter 5 - Facing the End

of

Dead Before Dawn: The Vampire Curse

is NOW available.

The vampire infection is taking over, Max is becoming a monster.

#vampire #gay #adventure #paranormal

Totally FREE read. New chapters every Tuesday and Friday.

The Blacklist - James Spader is Awesome! - #FanFridays 9

Rob and I are mainlining the boxset of season 1 of The Blacklist at the moment and it's turning out to be awesome, so I thought I would use it as this week's Fan Friday.

The Blacklist - James Spader is Awesome!

I have been a James Spader fan for a very, very long time. I first saw him in a made for TV movie called Starcrossed (more about that later), that my sister Sophie and I bought as a previously viewed video tape from our local Blockbuster while we were at school. This was in the 80s and I have been a huge fan ever since. I prefer him as the hero, but he plays a great baddie as well.

Wittegen Press

$2.99 | £1.99
Amazon | Other

However, even with this fact, I had held off watching The Blacklist. The adverts for it hadn't grabbed me and I didn't need another show to watch, so I didn't bother. What the previews told me was this was another Silence of the Lambs, only not so bloody or serial killer-ish because it's prime time TV. I wasn't really interested in that, but, as it turns out, The Blacklist is far more complex than that.

You do have the dynamic of the seemingly unstoppable, genius level criminal and the younger, just starting out, female FBI agent, but the connection between the two is not the same as with Starling and Lector.

Raymond Reddington (Spader) is not a bloodthirsty criminal, he is a mastermind who has built an empire on facilitating enterprises and gaining information for governments and criminals alike. Anyone who can pay him. While doing this he has come across those he feels deserve to be punished for their crimes, people on his Blacklist, some of which the FBI have never heard of. Turning himself in he offers to help the FBI bring these people to justice, but he will only work through agent Elizabeth Keen (Megan Boone).

What I find that I really love about The Blacklist is that in this show, it is not the heroes I trust implicitly to end up doing things right, to sort out the problems, it's Reddington, who is, in fact, a bad guy, kind of. He is the centre of trust to move everything forward, to get it right. In fact over the first four episodes (as far as Rob and I have reached so far) is seems the FBI are far more likely the screw things up than sort them out.

James Spader is superb as Reddington. He is confident, self possessed and very, very clever and I never doubt him for a minute, which I love. One of the reasons I had to stop watching Scorpion (a TV show about a team of geniuses saving the day) is that I could never trust the characters not to screw up, in fact the opposite was true and it was annoying. I love Reddington, because he is so much in control. He also has the most incredibly sexy voice ;).

Wittegen Press

$3.99 | £2.98
Amazon | Other

Megan Boone is also very good as Elizabeth Keen. She's thrown into a situation she doesn't understand and yet she forges on. She's afraid, she's vulnerable, but she still finds her path. The fact that her personal story is so completely part of the plot is also brilliant. Watching the pilot I was worried that it was heading in a certain direction, but it turned out it was so much more interesting that I first thought. I still have no idea what is really going on and I love it.

This is spies and action and mystery all rolled up into a really well written package. I recommend it.

So I mentioned I am a James Spader fan and I want to share with you a couple of my favourites from his back catalogue that are less well known than some of his more famous roles:

Starcrossed

Joey (James Spader), a mechanic, meets Mary (Belinda Bauer) when she is running from two men. He helps her, only to discover she is an alien and the two men she was running from are also aliens sent to kill her or drag her back to her home planet.

This film hits all my buttons and I have loved it for a long time. It's a bit corny, some of the lines are terrible, but it has a wonderful feel about it and I love Spader in it. I only have a VHS rip from the original tape Soph and I bought these days - it has yet to be released on DVD.

Jack's Back

John Wesford (James Spader), a young doctor, apparently commits suicide in remorse for recreating nearly all of Jack the Ripper's murders one hundred years later. However, his identical twin brother saw him die in a nightmare and he knows John didn't kill himself. Under suspicion himself Rick tries to find out the truth with the help of John's friend Chris Moscari (Cynthia Gibb).

This was another gift from the bargain bin at Blockbuster, but has, thank fully, been released on DVD since and I have added it to my collection. I love it because it has twins and that slightly paranormal edge with the twin connection, even though the main plot is very much a murder mystery thriller. Spader is also inordinately sexy in this.

So there you have it, my review of The Blacklist and a couple of James Spader classics to keep anyone who loves 80s movies happy. I hope you enjoyed my post.

Have a great weekend.

Mission Impossible - 5 People Can Save the World! #FanFridays 6

It's geek time again and for Fan Fridays 6 I have chosen another old favourite of mine: Mission Impossible, the original series. I do hope you enjoy reminiscing with me.

Mission Impossible

5 People Can Save the World!

I love Mission Impossible. It's one of those shows I remember fondly from watching reruns on TV when I was a child. Since it finished it's run in 1973, the year after I was born, I didn't get to see it the first time around.

Wittegen Press

$3.29 | £2.19
Amazon | Other

For those who have not seen Mission Impossible, each week members of the Impossible Missions Force (IMF) go into enemy territory, be is on foreign soil or undercover within the syndicate, and stop something dastardly happening. The way they do this is usually by pure trickery using the bad guys own insecurities or ego against them. The first five seasons, at least, are very clever.

At the beginning of each episode "Mr Phelps" is given his mission via tape recorder or record or even via coin operated binocular type machines. Every message in the first five seasons ended like this:

As always, if you or any of you IM force are caught or killed the Secretary will disavow any knowledge of your actions. This message will self destruct in 5 seconds.

I always thought that was terribly exciting, even though I had no idea who this "Secretary" person was :).

As a child I never realised there was a permanent cast except for Jim Phelps (Peter Graves) and I really believed he sat down and picked different people for the mission each week. How I failed to notice they were always the same I'll never know, but somehow I managed it :).

I also never realised that in the first season it wasn't Jim who led the team. It was Dan Briggs (Steven Hill) who was in charge. I didn't figure this out until Rob and I bought the first set of DVDs while were were on holiday in Canada for our 10th wedding anniversary. We had a little cabin for a week and we used to go walking and sightseeing in the mornings and curl up with hot drinks in front of the TV in the afternoons before going somewhere posh for dinner - hence the DVDs.

I think what I love most about Mission Impossible is the fact it is a fundamental illustration that the bad guys don't win. We all know that in real life sometimes they do, but not in the world of Jim, Barney, Rollin, Cinnamon and Willy.

That's the team I always used to remember from watching it as a child. I think BBC2 may have had a licence to show season 2 and 3 a lot.

The team for s2 & s3 are as follows:

• Jim Phelps - the brains behind the ingenious plans
• Cinnamon Carter (Barbara Bain) - ex-model and sometimes the honey-trap, but not always
• Rollin Hand (Martin Landau) - magician, impersonator and all round useful man to know
• Barney Collier (Greg Morris) - electronics engineer
• Willy Armitage (Peter Lupus)  - strong man

One of the great things about Barney was that the fact he was a person of colour was never made an issue. He was like Uhura on the bridge of the Enterprise; there for skills and ability as if this was how things simply were. Given that this was 1966-1973 for the original run - this was awesome. There were a couple of episodes that relied on the colour of his skin, mostly because the team were infiltrating the African American mob or something similar, but for the majority of episodes he was the engineering brain of the team.

Cinnamon wasn't quite so lucky in that she did get to be the honey trap on a lot of occasions, but she did get to be lots of other interesting parts of the plans as well. Dana (Lesley Ann Warren), who came in, in season 5 had something of a more dynamic storyline, which was an improvement.

For two seasons we also had the wonderful Leonard Nimoy as Paris, taking over Rollin's roll when Martin Landau left to pursue other projects.

Whether it was the dreaded Eastern block, the Syndicate, enemy assassins, defecting scientists or sons of Nazis who wanted the 4th Reich, the Mission Impossible team could bring them down. They never used brute force and they were always the little guy, hopelessly out gunned by the opposition, but their cleverness always won out in the end.

With their gadgets, their face masks that could magically make someone look exactly like someone else, their incredible, devious plans and the ingenuity of the individual members, not once did they fail and not once did the Secretary have to disavow their existence, at least, not until the 1980s remake.

I have all seven seasons on DVD, and the 1980s reboots as well, and I love them all. They are my go to, feel good TV show when I want to know that everything can be right with the world. The only thing is, if you watch too many eps, you do begin to believe that 5 people can solve any problem in the world, anywhere!

Wittegen Press

$2.99 | £1.99
Amazon | Other

There are so many wonderful episodes that I cannot pick just one as my favourite. Some of the ones I really like are:

• S1 - Zubrovnik's Ghost - wife or deceased scientist, Kurt Zubrovnik, is being pressured to work for the Eastern block by a fake psychic using her husband's ghost. Using their own psychic the IMF try to convince her of the fraud.
• S2 - The Condemned - Jim's friend, David Webster, has been framed for the murder and Jim asks the other members of the IMF to help prove his friend's innocence.
• S3 - Live Bait - An double agent for the US, Selby is suspected by his colleague Kellerman. The IMF have to discredit Kellerman and keep Selby in position within the enemy intelligence agency.
• S4 - Submarine - A Nazi, Kruger Schtelman, has kept silent about a hoard of Nazi gold for the whole of his imprionment. Due to be released in 3 days, the IMF must get him to give up the location of the gold before it falls into the hands of the government holding Schtelman or neo-Nazis.
• S5 - Cat's Paw - Barney sets out to get the people who killed his journalist brother with the help of the rest of the IMF team.

One thing I will say is that the double eps are always my least favourite because the writers had the timing down perfectly for single eps and when they spread into double eps they often simply padded them :). The stories are still good, but with a little too much filler.

There are seven seasons and I would say 1-5 are excellent, 6 is okay and 7 is watchable, but a bit meh. They changed the format in the last couple of season and focused on domestic stories mostly involving organised crime, because they were cheaper to film, They are not as clever or as interesting as the earlier seasons. When watching season 7 you can tell why they were cancelled in the end.

I love this show and I highly recommend it to everyone. It has such a feel good vibe.

Have you seen the original Mission Impossible? Do you have a favourite character? What do you always remember most?

---

Still pimping out the Share a Scare Halloween Blog Hop. It will run on the 31st October as you would expect, but now is the time to sign up.

Have something a little bit scary to share? All bloggers, authors and artists welcome. Just click the link to see all the details:

Share a Scare - A Halloween Blog Hop

Monster Mondays #6: The Lair (Gay Vampires FTW!)

Good morning (or afternoon or evening :)) I hope this Monday finds you all well. Today I am dipping into one of my favourite things for my monster: the vampire genre, and I have a recommendation for you.

Monster Mondays posts may be fiction, film reviews, book reviews or me waxing lyrical about a particular monster. Monsters can be paranormal, sci-fi, fantasy or even simply human. So basically, anything monster goes. I also invite anyone who would like to, to join in with their own post. (See end for details).

The Lair

Now, let me start off by saying this is not for anyone under 18 and it is not Shakespeare. It is, however, highly entertaining, well, at least I think it is.

This is the kind of show where one of the characters can say:

"A gay vampire sex club after sunrise is the loneliest place on earth."

with a perfectly straight face :).

That's what the Lair is, in case you were wondering, a gay vampire sex club on a place called The Island and this show does not hold back from the sex. It kind of reminds me of Tumblr like that: content, content, content, gay sex, content, content ... :). This show is full of lots of very nice to look at semi-naked (and in some cases naked, although artfully posed) hot men, very often together.

That aside, I do actually watch it for the plot and the characters, no I'm not kidding. I am very sad there are only 3 seasons because they left it on a cliff hanger and I want more of the epic romance between Damian and Thom. However, I am getting ahead of myself, let me introduce you to the protagonists:

Damian Courtenay

Damian Courtenay

This is Damian (Peter Stickles), head vampire and owner of The Lair. He used magic to form his coven of vampires that he refers to as The Family and he's cursed. He has a painting that holds his lifeforce and if it is damaged so is he and if he goes so do all the other vampires.

He was cursed by the vampire who created him and the painter of the painting, Richard DeVere, when he killed Richard out of fear and confusion after he realised what Richard had done to him. He is drawn to Thom because Thom looks exactly like Richard.

Thom Etherton

Thom Etherton and Jonathan

Here we have Thom Etherton (the hero played by David Moretti) and his boyfriend Jonathan. Thom is an investigative reporter for the Island newspaper and he get involved with vampires because he is looking into the John Doe murders occurring locally.

The moment Damian claps eyes on him, Damian is obsessed and Jonathan ends up in the middle of things and is bitten by one of Damian's "family" and used as bait to get to Thom.

Colin

Colin and victim

Finally we have Colin (Dylan Vox) (which I am assured to an American is a sexy name, but made me laugh out loud - the only person who can make Colin sound sexy is Colin Firth ;)), Damian's lieutenant.

Colin uses Damian's distraction with Thom to plot Damian's downfall so he can take over. He, of course, can't kill Damian, so he has to be creative.

Colin is the real baddie of the show.

Now there are plenty of other characters as well like Laura (Beverly Lynne) and Frankie (Brian Nolan) and Sheriff Trout (Colton Ford), but I could be here all day introducing them. They actually come together to make a plot that does hang together. In season 1 it's thinner than in season 2 and 3 and I think they missed a trick with the plot in season 2, but I was actually impressed by the plot of season 3. That's why I really want more because I think the show improved with every season.

There are other monsters too, a werewolf, an evil plant and even a male gorgon (I kid you not), so the show has variety. It manages to centre round a gay, vampire sex club without getting stuck in it.

It's not high budget (I think they made the first season in something like 12 days), in places it's like the lead up to gay porn, there is some terrible acting (and some great acting too) and I just love it to pieces. I've even written fanfic for it: Second Time Around which is an AU from the end of season 1 because I wrote it before I could lay my hands on season 2. All 3 seasons are available on DVD, including all in one boxset it you want (Amazon UK | Amazon US) - I believe it's also on Amazon Instant Video in the US. Go forth and enjoy the gay naked vampires! :)

Have you seen The Lair? What did you think? Would you ever consider watching it?

---

Monster Mondays #6 Links 

If you would like to join in, please feel free to make your Monster Monday post and add it to the list.

---

If you would like to add a graphic to your post, here are some codes you can just cut and paste.

Button Code

<a href="http://tashasthinkings.blogspot.co.uk/search/label/Monster%20Mondays"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhwAyJybwgAvYmqzk9slItRrFAYK3piLLlZ1AxDUoD1EQ1PCLZLnldgf59ASGKQMn4zFsXABsP1uG82GdPyyswTf-AvZu9UoNnUTobQzqFi45wF0xcH2-wg2AQxYsQPTR8TEfxKOSvVv-o/s1600/mm_banner_sq.png" /></a>

Banner Code (see top of post):

<a href="http://tashasthinkings.blogspot.co.uk/search/label/Monster%20Mondays"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg46zjwHKMCeJvkbp31oe-XMeyEKQTZfW6yWKthu4f3KP3iWp72PYw00AW_qMnX15L2C0JGsWcV5RJ6VKelzXcQdWTK_RLgFaeGHIVCM7OJrRnntqkOaxtjwfJjI52diQ3dMWzjHgzSp6CN/s1600/mm_banner.png" /></a>

100Things #10 Top 3 Favourite Vampire TV Series

I know that many people can't think of 3 vampire themed TV shows, but choosing just 3 for me was actually really hard. They have their own section on my DVD/Blu-Ray shelves. I'm not saying these are the epitome of the vampire TV show, but these three are my favourites.

Kindred: the Embraced

Now this is of the era of the colon shows (Poltergeist: The Legacy, Highlander: The Series etc), i.e. the mid to late 1990s. By some it was known as Kindred: The Embarrassed, but I always loved it, still do. I am still looking for the pilot that originally aired in the UK, I am sure it was longer and had more footage than the one on the DVD.

This show is based on Whitewolf's Vampire the Masquerade, well know to many role playing fans. I myself once role played a Malkavian vampire who thought she was a Jedi, but who had an alternative personality that thought she was a Sith. It was so much fun :).

Okay, back to the show. I am a huge fan of C.Thomas Howell to start with so having him in a lead role was brilliant and Mark Frankel was superb as Julian Luna. I really think the show could have gone somewhere given a chance, but alas, it was before vampires were really popular. Thinking about it, now would be a really good time to relaunch it :).

It's set in San Francisco, where Julian is the Prince of the City, i.e. he's the head vampire. There are different clans of vampire all represented on the Primogen council that Julian rules: Ventrue, Nosferatu, Brujah, Gangrel and Toreador. Different clans have different traits, in the series this boils down to:

• Ventrue = bankers, lawers, accountants, big bosses
• Nosferatu = look like monsters, keep to the shadows, are the sage like characters
• Brujah = the mob
• Gangrel = street gangs
• Toreador = artists, musicians and everything enterainment

The Masquerade is the most important thing to all vampires; the way they pretend to be human. Breaking the Masquerade and allowing humans to find out is the worst crime.

The series follows Frank Kohanek, a detective in the police department as he finds out and comes to understand Kindred. He ends up mixed up in Kindred politics as there is a struggle between the Ventrue and the Brujah to rule the city. I love this series because it has layers. The Kindred are all out to play their own game and they are thinking several moves ahead and yet they all have their failings too. I wish there had been more episodes.

Ultraviolet

This is one of those British shows that should have had a second series and never got one. It starts with Mike (Jack Davenport) uncovering and being recruited by a secret government organisation after his best friend Jack (Stephen Moyer) disappears the night before his wedding in mysterious circumstances. This organisation deals with all things vampire.

The organisation is run by Pearse (Philip Quast), a Roman Catholic priest and on the same team are Angela (Susannah Harker), a scientist and Rice (Idris Elba), a soldier. They hunt vampires using scientific methods and specially developed weaponry.

Jack has been turned into a vampire and the vampires are also interested in Kirsty, Jack's fiance, who Mike's more than a little bit in love with and who the vampires want to use to get to him. The series is full of relationships and interaction, but it never loses sight of the whole vampire mess either.

I love it because Jack Davenport is sexy as hell, the whole vampire idea is looked at in a different, scientific way, and it's beautifully encapsulated in a dramatic, exciting series. Well worth watching.

Forever Knight

This was made at the same time as the colon series (see above) and I never did get to see more than a handful of episodes while it was actually airing. This did not stop me from being part of the fandom any more than not being able to see Highlander stopped me. I was never as into it as Highlander, but I watched the fandom and read the fic.

These were the days when entire fandoms consisted of a couple of mailing lists and the odd web page :).

I first saw this in made for TV movie form called Midnight Cop in 1991. Rick Springfield played Nick Knight, the vampire turned cop, trying to become human and make up for his previous life of killing. I loved that film to pieces and when they made the series I so wanted to see it. Mostly I could only devour episode write ups and fanfic. In those days some very dedicated individuals would describe whole eps scene by scene for those of us who couldn't get our hands on it.

You have not lived until you have tried to watch an episode of a vampire show that is dark to begin with when it has been converted from NTSC to PAL and then copied three times. You youngsters have no idea how good you have it ;P.

The first episode is basically all about Nick's maker LaCroix trying to turn him back to being a proper vampire, while Nick tries to find out who is killing homeless people in the city. Along with this we meet Janette, another of LaCroix's children who runs a nightclub in the city and Natalie Lambert, the pathologist who is trying to help Nick become human again.

Nick does get a little whiny at times, but there are three series of eps and lots of fun to be had with this show. It has a special place in my heart. Just, word of advice, never, ever, ever watch the last ep of series 3. If there was a how to on how not to end a series, this would be the example. I think they were hoping for renewal, unfortunately then never got it so the blasphemy remains unfixed.