TV Round-up: Dexter, Mad Men & Why TV is better than Film

(Note: Most people who download these shows/people who live in the US will be way ahead of me but the UK channels took ages to buy the rights to show these progs in the UK!)

As a TV addict, it is thus natural for me to watch all the latest imports on British screens. Dexter and Mad Men premiered on terrestrial UK television about 2 weeks ago so I have now had a chance to watch the episodes and get a feel for the style of both programmes. My friend has already watched season 2 of Dexter I think online but I am watching it on normal telly.

(image found here at wikipedia)

Title credits of a television show are normally an interesting indicator of what it will be like, in my opinion. The title credits show almost very Homeric things going on as Dexter looks like he is getting himself ready for a new day…except red is the thematic colour here. And we all know what red symbolises inside our bodies. At first sight, Dexter is a crisp look at crime but ultimately it really rides on the performance of Dexter (Michael C. Hall, who was in Six Feet Under). It is an assured and quite chilling performance. He is a serial killer but is he a good one because he also catches the villains? Someone on IMDB.com noted that this TV show is surreal and I completely agree. It has a surreal, almost eerie feel to it which is a welcome break from the obsession with realism (not that there is a problem with realism, but injections of surrealism are nice distractions).

La Guerta, the Puerto Rican Police head, who hates Dexter’s sister (who is also on the police force) is part of the supporting cast. I am really liking this programme as even though Dexter is the key character in the series, Doakes and all the other characters are coming into their own. Dexter is proving to be one of those TV gems that doesn’t fit an exact formula. For people in the UK, it is on Wednesday, 10.35pm on ITV1.

Mad Men has received critical acclaim on both sides of the Atlantic. Mad Men is….very good, to say the least. Like Dexter, it does centre on one character, in this case, Donald Draper, an ad exec in the bygone retro era of 1959/1960, I think. Like most things under a stylish veneer, there is decay that is going to be surfaced. Created by Matthew Weiner, a former writer on the Sopranos, it has received a great deal of hype. So far, I can see why people are obsessing over it. It is not fast-moving AT ALL which will make in turn makes it easier to digest especially in the days of reality TV where everything happens so fast, like Dexter, Mad Men provides a nice break. It is very sexist, no black people but again it is about a microcosm of a world that does not exist. It is almost like watching a time capsule. The acting is top-notch, though.

These two new additions to UK screens are very very good (at the moment, I am finding it hard as to which one I prefer more because they both satisfy different things!) which leads me to my point about television being better than film at the moment. The soap operas on TV here like Eastenders and Hollyoaks are really enjoyable, these US dramas are doing what drama should be doing and the documentaries on Channel4 are engrossing (like the one on Stephen Hawkins). Film on the hand…10,000BC, is that really the best that Hollywood can do? I went to see Untraceable last night @ the cinema, it was good…but again, why do I like the TV offerings at the moment better ?