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The Best...title sequence

Michael C Hall as Dexter
  • Posted at 12:30pm
  • 26 February 2008
  • by PaulJones-RT
  • 6 comments

By day, Dexter Morgan is a blood-spatter analyst in the forensics branch of the Miami-Dade Police Department; by night, he's a serial killer.

A character for whom the term "antihero" might have been invented, he preys only on other serial killers: he's both a perpetrator of brutal crimes and an irresistible dispenser of justice.

Dexter is a twistedly original series, and one of the most intriguing central characters television has ever seen – and that's clear from the very beginning:

A feeding mosquito is smacked into a red smudge. A razor cuts through bristles and a droplet of crimson blood hits gleaming white porcelain. Thick slabs of fleshy bacon are chomped hungrily between a perfect set of teeth. A serrated knife slices the skin of a blood orange, producing a fine red mist, before the fruit's glistening innards are squeezed out.

Dental floss is wound around fingers like a garrotte. Cords are pulled tight - and revealed to be a pair of bootlaces. The outline of a face appears beneath a white shroud, before the T-shirt is pulled down to reveal a handsome but expressionless façade, with darkly glinting eyes. Then the same man emerges half-smiling from his front door into the Miami sunshine, just like any ordinary person.

These opening titles sum up in one elegant sequence all that is great about Dexter.

Highly stylised and beautifully shot, they look fantastic. Just like the series, they're slick, funny, intelligent and playful, and constantly wrong-foot the viewer. And the references to murder, drawn as they are from such mundane rituals, point to the dark-comedy heart of the show.

They also tell us that the devil really is in the detail. Dexter's morning routine seems to be as rigorous and regimented as the planning of his next murder and the preparation of his prospective crime scenes (all polythene-covered and, like his victims, taped down).

We get up close and personal with Dexter in these opening credits. It's one of the cunning things about the show, too, that with Dexter both star and narrator, we're always in his head, watching the world through his eyes. And it's frightening how compelling his point of view becomes.

Dexter's policeman foster father recognised the darkness within him at an early age, and it's his meticulous tutoring that has curbed Dexter's childhood urges to kill indiscriminately, and taught him how to survive in the real world. Dexter has learned how to appear ordinary – when to laugh, how to make jokes, when to show concern. In public, he always wears a mask, and when he steps outside the sanctuary of his home at the end of the title sequence, that mask is firmly in place.

If you're a fan of ground-breaking television - thrilling, challenging, witty and beautiful – and haven't had a chance to get your teeth into Dexter (or let him get his claws into you), then prepare yourself with a two-minute taster in the form of the best title sequence ever.

Finally, might I also recommend you listen to Daniel Licht's haunting closing music, Blood Theme – it really is a killer tune.

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Post a comment | 6 comments

Comments

  • Posted on 16 September 2008
  • at 2:04pm
  • by im_in_skwl_as_i_type_this

omg. dexter is the best show ive ever seen... the plot is so interesting and series 2 is almost finished on fx.the end of the series is building to a climax which i am dying to see

  • Posted on 22 July 2008
  • at 3:13pm
  • by Maria

Deaxter is one of my favourite TV programmes - it is so original and unlike anything else on! And it is quite scary how compelling Dexter's views are and how you are rooting for a serial killer all the way through. And the Blood Theme is brilliant!

  • Posted on 01 July 2008
  • at 3:52pm
  • by Bob

Our family agrees totally! And so far as our daughter is concerned, that barely detectable, but nevertheless certain, smile when he comes out of his door is for her and nobody else in the world!

  • Posted on 01 May 2008
  • at 1:20am
  • by shonamr

Dexter is a really brilliant show. The titles are great, imaginative and fitting!

  • Posted on 05 March 2008
  • at 6:56pm
  • by tigryonok

Dexter - simply to die for ]:)

  • Posted on 28 February 2008
  • at 9:00pm
  • by generalsmuts

Dexter is pretty much amazing, and the only decent thing on ITV at the moment, apart from a few other imports on ITV2 and 3. Why can't they make ANYTHING good?

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