Dexter (with video trailer): Good cop and bad cop combined?

Posted by Remote Control on March 1, 2008 6:58 PM | Permalink

Good cop, bad cop – the tired staple of many an American drama series has been given a whole new lease of life on UK telly screens thanks to the arrival of Dexter (ITV 4, Sunday, 10pm; second episode ITV 1, Thursday, 10.35pm).

But what I can’t work out is if it’s any good or not. In a nutshell, Dexter is a blood pattern analyist for the cops in Miami. And when he’s not helping provide the evidence for cases, he’s dishing out his own form of justice. As a serial killer, bunking off those who evade the law.

Episode one, which aired last week and is on again on Sunday, saw him see off two people – a serial child killer and a bloke who is in to making snuff movies. We don’t actually see the full killing of them, but we do know his way of seeing them off is as brutal as it is methodical.

Killing appears to be in his blood – constant flashbacks show us his childhood, when his step-father took his lust for killing animals and helped train him to kill people who deserved to die.

Inbetween killing people, he’s busy at work trying to unravel murder cases, while at the same time working on a somewhat difficult relationship with a woman called Rita.

What pulls together his part-time past-time and his full-time vocation is that it becomes very clear that someone else knows about his double life. Quite how they will use that knowledge will surely form a key part of the series.

His monologues about his crimes sometimes verge on parody, but the humour is dark and nothing appears to be too self indulgent.

It’s gripping from the off, and what makes it so chilling is Michael C Hall’s portrayal of Dexter as a seemingly likeable chap. What worries me is that he remains likeable, despite seeing him kill. It’s as though the audience are being invited to approve of what he does. And that, as a viewer, leaves me a tad uncomfortable.

But it is such a departure from the normal, often moralistic tones of US drama, where wrongs are always corrected, and the bad guys found out. Can you image CSI working with Gill doubling up as the murderer?

At the moment it is refreshing. I suspect it will remain so – it’s won a second series in America and I would urge anyone who is a fan of crime dramas to join in for the Dexter ride.