Dexter

With Lost, Heroes, CSI Miami and now Doctor Who all in hiatus and Rome at an end, I needed a new series to keep me away from Big Brother this summer.

So far Dexter seems to be doing the trick. "A kind of CSI meets Patricia Highsmith" said Martha Kearney, presenter of Newsnight Review. The combination is fascinating because, thanks to Dexter's day job as a blood splatter expert with Miami Dade PD, there's always a traditional forensics manhunt going on in parallel. This is one of the many tactics the writers are using to displace our standard ethical reflexes.

I was less then 100% convinced after episode one, which felt just a bit too nasty. Could they really keep up the level of dry, black humour required to preserve our sympthy with 'the serial killer's serial killer'? The answer, after episode two at least, seems to be yes. The character is becoming genuinely fascinating. I like the way Dexter, unable since some mysterious childhood trauma to feel emotions, nevertheless somehow gets them, perhaps more than most. And I loved it when his 'damaged' girlfriend hugs him and says "I must have found the last decent man around' after he refuses to push her for sex.

Perhaps the unpleasant joke at the heart of Showtime's drama will wear off eventually, but for now at least, enough slow-burn mysteries and on-going character-based situations have now been established to keep me coming back.