Dexter

Based on a novel by Jeff Lindsay, the excellent Showtime series Dexter is centered around one of the all-time great plots–a serial killer who kills only serial killers. Michael C. Hall, who previously played closeted gay funeral director David Fisher on the HBO drama Six Feet Under, is superbly cool, calm, and collected as Dexter Morgan, a brooding blood-splatter expert who seems to really enjoy killing bad people. Dexter is a very creepy guy with a morbid sense of humor and morality, living by a strict code so he doesn’t make a mistake and get caught. Carefully knocking off serial killers in a ritualistic method, he then strategically deposits the body parts where he believes no one will ever find them. As the police–including his sister, Officer Debra Morgan (Jennifer Carpenter, Hall’s off-screen wife)–search for the Bay Harbor Butcher, who just happens to be right under their nose, Dexter attempts to have some kind of normal life. But there’s nothing normal about this man, who shares his never-ending ethical dilemmas with the audience via voice-over narration. Despite the excess of blood, Dexter is a carefully crafted and intensely entertaining examination of life and death as seen through the eyes of a very strange character.