#Meet The Australian Bloodhunters Of Firebite

“Firebite” has a unique sense of place, and it explores a fresh side of the vampire hunting mythos to the tune of some Aussie guitar rock. The vampires here nest underground in a honeycomb of tunnels outside an Australian mining town. The closest screen comparison might be the animated “Scooby-Doo and the Legend of the Vampire,” but only because of the outback setting. In that movie, Dracula’s howling “children of the night” are dingos instead of wolves. Shaggy asks, “Like, whoever heard of Australian vampires, anyway?”

“Firebite” is the swift, boomeranging answer to that question. It’s easy to forget this, but AMC originally stood for “American Movie Classics.” It’s been said that Black history is American history … but in “Firebite,” it goes beyond borders and the African-American tradition to the realm of Australian history.

This series foregrounds the Indigenous perspective. Right from the beginning, it has Shanika giving a presentation in class about “the true history of Australia,” where British colonialists came bearing smallpox and vampires, “addicted to the Blackfella blood.” This isn’t just a lazy expository scene; she’s got 11 vampires in place of the 11 ships in the First Fleet, which established the foundational European penal colony Down Under.

Like the fortified Subaru WRX that kicks up off-road dust in it, “Firebite” has a few twists and turns that demonstrate it’s not afraid to go where you don’t expect, even striking a note of tragedy amid its cheesy, slow-mo, vampire-killing freeze frames. At times, the rhythms of it do make it feel a bit padded, like it could have been six episodes instead of eight. However, when I finished the last episode — and realized the season was over — I was sad to see it end and felt it had stuck the landing.