The hit Showtime series Dexter will premiere February 17th on CBS, in light of the lack of new scripted shows thanks to the WGA Strike.
Dexter’s storyline revolves around Dexter Morgan, an employee in the crime lab of the Miami Metropolitan Police Department. The kicker to his situation:
Dexter moonlights as a serial killer of criminals who he believes have escaped justice.
Talk about vigilantes. I love the idea for the story and if I got Showtime, I’d probably watch it. But I don’t and haven’t, yet I’ve heard a lot of great things about it. It’s now awaiting the start of its third season on the pay channel, but for CBS viewers who are new to it, this will be season one.
CBS plans on showing all 12 first season episodes starting at 10pm EST on February 17th.
Here is the main problem I see, at least for myself:
The show is a cable series, and on Showtime, meaning there is nudity, bad language and pretty gruesome violence from what I read. In order for it to pass on CBS, it’s going to have to cut out a lot of “stuff.”
One thing is that the episodes run 55 minutes on cable, as opposed to the 45 you get with a primetime network show, meaning no matter what happens, you’re going to lose 10 minutes somewhere.
If you read the story about this on IGN, you can see some of the follow-up comments by fans and it makes me hesitant to really check this out.
I am a firm believers in seeing stuff in their original, intended format, so I’d rather watch the first season on DVD instead.
In fact, I may just read the book first as an alternative to both, as through my research I’ve discovered that this was based off a novel by Jeff Lindsey, who has added two sequels in the meantime.
What about you? I know some of you watch it and love it…would it be wise to see it on DVD instead of network television? Are the books any good?
Definitely watch the DVDs! Quality aside, watching it on CBS will undermine the WGA’s cause, IMO.
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Good point Adam.
Yeah – they are going to “cut it up” too much to get it viewable on CBS or any other network station.
Love this show – one of my absolute favorites to watch!!!
I’m with Adam. Don’t give CBS more reason to stay away from the bargaining table. (Of course buying the DVDs puts money in Viacom’s pockets too, but at least supports the writers’ cause a little better.)
I disagree a little with The Trousered Ape, in that I suspect most of the cuts will occur to the politics within the police department rather than with the cable-flavored stuff. There isn’t really much gore, nudity, or profanity (Dexter’s sister Deb notwithstanding.) Of course I could be proven totally wrong.
As the the more general question: Mike, you should definitely give Dexter a try.
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Second season definitely stepped up the nudity – much more so than what was ran during the first season.
And you know any time Deb is on the screen and has a line to speak it’s probably going to be one long bleep sound…lol
Are you saying I should START with the second season, Ape?
No. I’m just saying that they will have to bleep much more than they will need to cut in Season 1 as opposed to Season 2.