As established in part 1 (Season 1, Episode 1) Metro police detective Nick Knight (Geraint Wyn Davies) happens to be an 800 (Give or take...But rounding it off at 800 makes the math easier) year old vampire passing as mortal. His superior Captain Stonetree (Gary Farmer) is very accommodating about Nick's difficulty working a night shift even though Nick never specifies what health condition he has that makes days bad for him. But he requires him to take on a partner from the day shift and that partner is Don Schanke (John Kapelos) - a yapping troglodyte he can't stand.
Along with the understanding captain, and a day-shift partner who also does a lot of work on the night-shift with Nick, is Dr.Natalie Lambert (Catherine Disher) the coroner he works with. Her brilliant postmortem examinations of cadavers augments her other role in Nick's life - keeper of his vampire secret and somehow his addictions counsellor. She helps Nick find his humanity offering considerably more than merely playing Moneypenny to his 007.
Multiple murders across the city require attention. Most of them are of homeless people but one, resulted in the death of a security guard. It occurred at a museum and involved the theft of a sacred Mayan jade cup used for the ritual drinking of blood. Museum employee Dr.Alyce Hunter (Christine Reeves) sought to help in any way she could, particularly after encountering Nick - a man she found fascinating for reasons she did not entirely understand at first. The cup, matched with another that Nick has, can supposedly cure vampirism. He believes that and so does his mentor Lucien LaCroix - an even more ancient vampire.
As we see depicted in flashback all the way to 1228 AD, LaCroix's case for the vampire lifestyle had diminished in validity for Nick almost immediately upon becoming one, but never for LaCroix. Nick is confident that LaCroix is in the city on a killing spree and that he stole the cup. LaCroix has signalled his presence (Via guest DJ spot on a pirate radio for vampires that Nick listens to) and he and Nick meet again. Hunter follows Nick and is somehow undetected as the two vampires meet for an encounter that is more intervention than reunion.
It is a rehash of a recurring argument over centuries. Nick had misgivings before and always went back with the LaCroix and his tribe. LaCroix and other vampires did not think that Nick would be a tourist in their culture. For most of the time elapsed he was far from a guy experimenting with a different lifestyle. But he never lost a sense of right and wrong or compassion for the downtrodden. LaCroix had neither, nor an understanding of why a vampire might retain anything like that.
Like a lot of malevolent mortals can, LaCroix is a vampire who can present any self-serving justifications as reasoning. Like a lot of heroic mortals Nick is haunted by his past, sees his mistakes and even his contradictions, trying to right them as best he can even though the circumstances are not ideal. Thus a horror story relates commentary on the human condition via a mythological exemplar. As we see, LaCroix gave Nick what people even in his present day would think was a gift. One individual whom Nick cares for begs for the same gift.
So as with the formula of most episodes two mysteries run concurrent: A crime for Nick to investigate, and the continuing mystery of why he is the way he is which the show juxtaposes in a manner that seems like it should. The template is beautifully established. But they also did some trouble-shooting to help the audience with a few things that detracted from the audience's enthrallment.
The dialogue from part one, tells us Nick has been in the city for three years and transferred there from Chicago. How his ruse of being a human works suggests that, as all vampires of a few hundred years standing would have had to do, he assumed a new identity and presumably it was that of a cop who completed a background check and academy training like any one of them would have had to do.
In part one, we also see Nick use a vampire power of suggestion in dealing with a prying journalist that works like a Jedi mind trick. That trick utilized with practice as well as other vampire powers get him pretty far from what we see selling his ruse and performing his duty as cop. None of this diminishes the preposterous notion of vampire as cop.
But they weren't selling the audience on realism. They were getting them to accept a diagesis for the duration of a weekly broadcast teleplay. These things helped the audience. They did not make things more realistic. They merely reconfigured what they had to put it in line with what an audience could accommodate to be entertained.
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