Julie Benz

Dexter - Showtime
Premieres : Sunday, Oct. 1 A
irs : Sundays at 10 p.m.

Movies and TV shows about serial killers are nothing new, and "Dexter" is a show about a serial killer. Here’s the thing, though: He’s the good guy.

Relatively, anyway. Dexter Morgan (the perfectly cast Michael C. Hall, of "Six Feet Under" fame) does blood-spatter analysis for the Miami crime lab, and as such sees some of the city’s most heinous crimes — for which he then metes out his own brand of extralegal justice.

The show’s twisted worldview is shot through with morbid humor, and Hall delivers a fantastic performance as the emotionless Dexter, with strong support from Julie Benz ("Angel") as his equally damaged girlfriend and James Remar as Dexter’s adoptive father, a cop who helped hone his son’s peculiar skills. "Dexter" both subverts and reanimates the serial-killer genre, and it’s going straight into the DVR queue come October.