by D.Chazan

Created on: March 08, 2009

Dexter Morgan works for the Miami Dade police department, as a forensic specialist in blood splatter analysis. His sister Debra is a detective for the same precinct, and their father Harry was also a well respected policeman at the same station. All this sounds pretty humdrum. However, that is as far from reality as can possibly be. While Harry's daughter Debra is biologically his own, Harry adopted Dexter as a young child. But before Harry took him in, something mysterious happened to Dexter that changed him forever. Today he is an emotionless, self-proclaimed "monster" whose only pleasure is in killing. Harry saw this coming, and realized he couldn't stop Dexter from becoming a murderer. Instead, he decided to teach Dexter how to seem normal to the world while channeling Dexter's urges so that his targets are only other killers whom the authorities have never been able to bring to justice.

This is the basis for the TV series "Dexter", and what an interesting premise it is. As you can see from the blurb above, the series was inspired by the novels by Jeff Lindsay an author I've never heard of, but I'm certainly impressed with his idea of a sort of 'Robin Hood' serial killer. Needless to say, this is not your ordinary crime drama series. The "hero" here is about as much of a criminal as the people the police and he are hunting, and are certainly no less sociopaths. This is combined with Dexter's dilemmas with his girlfriend, trying to promote his sister's career, living with Harry's ghost, and all the while attempting to behave like a normal person makes for some very interesting situations.

What makes "Dexter" a true stand-out of a crime series is that instead of having a crime presented to us at the beginning of every episode, which is conveniently solved by the end of that hour, this series takes on one major crime PER SEASON! Yes, just like in real life, in this show, when a crime is discovered, it takes days, weeks and sometimes months to uncover the truth and arrest the right suspect. I have to say that watching the first three seasons like this really has made me become a bit cynical about other crime dramas that solve their mysteries within their single airing time-slot. We all know that the criminal justice system doesn't work that quickly, and even the Law & Order series - which at least notes the passage of time in their cases - shove a whole case into one episode.

The other thing that makes this crime drama different from the others is the way

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