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Unfortunately it won't be un-cut, but it's far better than the usual broadcast fare....
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The arresting 'Dexter' gets a shot on CBS
By Robert Bianco, USA TODAY
You have to like a strike that leaves us with such a fabulous parting gift.
Having run out of its own crime series, CBS has turned to sister station Showtime for one of TV's best: Dexter, a darkly comic, morally complex drama driven by Michael C. Hall's witty, weirdly sexually charged performance as a psychopathic serial killer who has standards. It's bonus time all around: CBS takes a risk-free risk on a superlative series, and Dexter gets the mass audience and Emmy exposure it has long deserved.
Adapted from Jeff Lindsay's novels, Dexter follows a Miami forensics expert who enjoys killing killers, thanks to a cop foster father who channeled Dexter's psychopathic urges for the public good. Though he has no normal emotions, Dexter knows how to fake them, as he explains in voice-over narration. The device is a bit distancing but lets Hall add ever more eerily humorous layers to his performance.
As terrific as the show and its star are, Dexter is not for everyone. Adult in tone and intention and structured something like a miniseries, Dexter is a more intense hour than we're used to seeing on CBS. It's an interesting artistic reach for the network, and one it probably never would have made had the strike not changed the normal commercial equation.
That change has also allowed CBS to move Dexter to broadcast TV with fewer-than-usual ad breaks and minimal alterations. Cable profanities have been replaced by dubbed, often silly substitutes, and the blood flow has been reduced. But the show was always more about the threat of violence than violence itself.
Granted, broadcast TV has never seen anyone quite like Dexter, whose season-long pursuit of a new serial killer is driven in part by hero worship. Yet surely American viewers are capable of deciding for themselves whether such a show, airing in a late time slot with appropriate warnings, belongs in their homes.
And make no mistake: Though Dexter is obviously sick — a condition he freely acknowledges — his series is not. There's nothing gratuitous or hypocritical about Dexter. It doesn't glorify murder or use crime solving as a vile excuse to revel in the pain inflicted on victims. Instead, it dares to ask who's worse: Dexter or the more "normal" people he chases in each episode.
Now you get to watch and decide for yourself. Think of that as yet another gift.
By Robert Bianco, USA TODAY
You have to like a strike that leaves us with such a fabulous parting gift.
Having run out of its own crime series, CBS has turned to sister station Showtime for one of TV's best: Dexter, a darkly comic, morally complex drama driven by Michael C. Hall's witty, weirdly sexually charged performance as a psychopathic serial killer who has standards. It's bonus time all around: CBS takes a risk-free risk on a superlative series, and Dexter gets the mass audience and Emmy exposure it has long deserved.
Adapted from Jeff Lindsay's novels, Dexter follows a Miami forensics expert who enjoys killing killers, thanks to a cop foster father who channeled Dexter's psychopathic urges for the public good. Though he has no normal emotions, Dexter knows how to fake them, as he explains in voice-over narration. The device is a bit distancing but lets Hall add ever more eerily humorous layers to his performance.
As terrific as the show and its star are, Dexter is not for everyone. Adult in tone and intention and structured something like a miniseries, Dexter is a more intense hour than we're used to seeing on CBS. It's an interesting artistic reach for the network, and one it probably never would have made had the strike not changed the normal commercial equation.
That change has also allowed CBS to move Dexter to broadcast TV with fewer-than-usual ad breaks and minimal alterations. Cable profanities have been replaced by dubbed, often silly substitutes, and the blood flow has been reduced. But the show was always more about the threat of violence than violence itself.
Granted, broadcast TV has never seen anyone quite like Dexter, whose season-long pursuit of a new serial killer is driven in part by hero worship. Yet surely American viewers are capable of deciding for themselves whether such a show, airing in a late time slot with appropriate warnings, belongs in their homes.
And make no mistake: Though Dexter is obviously sick — a condition he freely acknowledges — his series is not. There's nothing gratuitous or hypocritical about Dexter. It doesn't glorify murder or use crime solving as a vile excuse to revel in the pain inflicted on victims. Instead, it dares to ask who's worse: Dexter or the more "normal" people he chases in each episode.
Now you get to watch and decide for yourself. Think of that as yet another gift.
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