In the past, I’ve mentioned to Dave that he’s never steered me wrong with a TV show recommendation. In fact, his selections from digital cable (and mine picked up later the same evening from newsgroups) have been nothing short of excellent: The Sopranos and Entourage have both been two of my favourite programs over the past few years. It’s interesting to note that both of these are typically HBO shows, and I’m always really impressed with the high quality of production.
This past week, I finally gave into another highly-hyped suggestion, and watched the first season of Dexter, a Showtime series.
By day, Dexter is a forensics specialist for the Miami Metro police who deals with blood spatter patterns at crime scenes. His alter ego, similar to Patrick Bateman in American Psycho, is a serial killer. His critical influence, though, is that he only murders people who have killed (usually repeatedly) and not been punished properly by the justice system. He rationalizes his own life and morality with a code of ethics instilled by his foster father, Harry.
True to form, the show is fairly gruesome and graphic, often showing large pools of blood and violent images of crimes.
The dialog in Dexter is supplemented by Dexter’s own narration: there are often periods where the monotone voice of the serial killer serves to advance the plot or indicate his own thoughts about a situation. During these periods, there are many extreme closeup shots of eyes or neutral facial expressions.
I’d really recommend this show to anyone interested in psychological thrillers or a faux-CSI type of plotline. It’s much higher quality TV than I’d expected, and the ending of Season 1 was a fairly decent conclusion. I’m onto Season 2 at the moment and fully expect good things from it.
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