“Dexter,” Showtime’s flagship drama about a serial killer, lies somewhere above network programming in terms of the public’s taste. It has run for three seasons, with the fourth premiering last night. Audiences love it, and so do critics. The New York Daily News gushed, “It’s bold, different, and exciting, with a central character and performance that take your breath away.” The Chicago Tribune burbled, “To deny yourself the engrossing ‘Dexter’ based on its subject matter would be to miss out on one of television’s most fiendishly intelligent new dramas.”
The message is clear: “Dexter” is culture—high culture—and one would think that it would owe some of its highness to the fact that it was adapted from a series of novels. But Jeff Lindsay’s series of crime thrillers is hardly noteworthy in itself. Nobody had heard of it before Showtime picked it up. It’s a cliché that “the book is usually better than the movie,” but for “Dexter” this is not true: its form is much more suited for the screen than it is for the page.
This becomes dreadfully obvious after reading a few pages of the book, “Darkly Dreaming Dexter,” that served as season one’s blueprint. A select passage reads, “I could not be caught, not now. I had worked too hard, too long, to make this work for me, to protect my happy little life.” All of it is like this. Dexter narrates, though he makes a much more compelling character than a narrator—his lack of introspection is his signature characteristic.
The book foregrounds its subject’s tunnel vision: writing narrative like this is comparatively simple, which is why it’s so common in modern, amateurish fiction, and why it might adapt so well to cinema. But the series adapts itself awkwardly to TV.
Scenes take place with minimal involvement from Dexter, or no involvement at all. The suspense depends on knowing as much as Dexter does, but the audience is permitted to know more than him—like when we glance into the walk-in fridge of a cosmetic surgeon and realize at once that he’s Dexter’s double. Without tension, conceits seem simple and trite.
Some friends of mine have suggested that I “underestimate the sense of humor” of “Dexter.” The humor must come from the disconnect between the understated narration and the grotesque subject matter. But the narration makes everything banal. “Dexter” as a series is content to probe a corpse with a Slurpee straw and a serial killer’s psyche with a butter knife.
Yech! “Dexter” is like a middle schooler trying to write serious fiction. Fans and critics will flock back to “Dexter” for season four, but I will not.
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