Serial Killer Thriller Series On Netflix Is Perfect To Watch Thanks To New Show
Dexter and How I Met Your Mother are two completely different shows that have something unfortunate in common: each has a series finale so bad that it retroactively ruins what came before, making it hard for fans to revisit even the greatest episodes. Dexter’s ending was so bad that I hesitated to check out the surprisingly decent follow-up series New Blood. But once I did and then scoped out Dexter: Original Sin (the prequel slashing its way through the ratings), I decided that now was the perfect time to watch the original Dexter show work its bloody magic on Netflix.
What To Know About Dexter
If you’ve never watched Dexter before, you should know its wild premise (ripped straight from Jeff Lindsay’s Dexter novels) before you add it to your Netflix queue. Our title character is a forensic specialist with the Miami Police Department who has a startling secret: he’s a serial killer who has been driven by the violent urges of his “Dark Passenger” since seeing his mother brutally murdered. He was raised by a cop who trained his adoptive son to only kill bad people, and Dexter must now navigate a double life as both a mild-mannered blood-splatter analyst and a ruthless vigilante murderer.
Dexter (unlike many shows on Netflix) has a great cast, including Michael C. Hall (otherwise best known for Six Feet Under) who won a Golden Globe for his powerful performance. Other great cast members include Julie Benz (of Buffy and Angel fame) as Dexter’s love interest and Jennifer Carpenter (horror fans will know her from Quarantine and The Exorcism of Emily Rose) as his potty-mouthed sister. And without getting into spoilers, later seasons bring in great guest stars, including Jimmy Smits, Edward James Olmos, John Lithgow, and many more.
If the cast of Dexter doesn’t inspire you to pull up your Netflix account, you may be interested in how many awards and nominations this show about a quirky killer has received. The show was nominated for an impressive 24 Primetime Emmys and took home two of them, just as it was nominated for 10 Golden Globe awards and took home two statues. As for Hall, he personally took home one of those Golden Globes as well as Satellite, Saturn, and Screen Actor’s Guild awards for his sublime performance as Dexter.
For the most part, Dexter impressed critics and fans alike long before it landed on Netflix. On Rotten Tomatoes, the series has a critical rating of 71 percent, and audiences gave it (via the Popcornmeter) 81 percent. This goes to show that even though the series has a legendarily terrible ending, most who watched it felt that it was more than the sum of its parts and that its creativity and clever execution for most of its eight seasons outweigh the show pretty epically stumbling over the finish line at the end.
The Right Time To Revisit
Plus, New Blood really did its best to redeem the original show’s bizarre ending, and Original Sin has proven to be a clever prequel that adds some crunchy context to our title killer’s earliest adventures. Collectively, these two follow-up shows did what I once thought was impossible: make me interested in the original show despite its extremely flawed finale. And now that Dexter is on Netflix, I’ve been enjoying rewatching one of premium cable’s boldest and bloodiest creations.
Will you find Dexter as rewarding when you watch (or rewatch) it on Netflix, or is this one series you’d rather go dump into the Gulf Stream? You won’t know until you press play. And if you’re anything like me, you can look forward to an opening title sequence (one that won a Creative Arts Emmy, no less) which will never make you want to skip the intro.
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