Dexter (TV Series) From literature to television

Jeffrey P. Freundlich, a.k.a. Jeff Lindsay is an American playwright and novelist who started writing science fiction[i] and then switched off to the police genre beginning a saga which already includes five books which are the ones that have given him world fame, and captivated Showtime Television Network, a paid television cable which is well known for emphasizing the aesthetic quality of its television products, and its critical and innovative focus in the production of television series[ii]

One of the novelties of this transposition in genres is that the condition that the executive producers imposed upon themselves in agreement with Lindsay, who participates as adviser, consisted in avoiding at all costs that the series should be a mere transcript of the novels by recognizing the enormous differences which exist between the literary language and the language of television scripts, so that the series should not become the novel adapted to the television screen[iii]. It is written in an original script which, in any case, recreates not only the character, but also his diegetic world, exclusively maintaining a central concept: Dexter Morgan (Michael Hall) is a serial killer whose victims are other serial killers[iv]

This conceptual definition does not mean that Dexter’s victims are only other killers like himself, but rather that this is the main dramatic axis that provides order for the story of reason and which itself already constitutes a novelty never shown before in the cinema or television screens. But, besides, it also pursues another profile: that of murderers who in one way or another have managed to escape the action of justice. In this case, the series takes up again conceptual elements of a minor genre that was widely acclaimed in the decades of the 70s and the 80s in the U.S., that of the man who “takes justice in his own hands”, which we all remember paradigmatically played by Charles Bronson (Death Wish, 1974). But the great difference between Dexter Morgan and Paul Kersey consists in that the latter is an ordinary citizen who decides to avenge his wife’s murder in a diegetic world which easily attempts to reflect the debates current at that time in the city of New York on the lack of safety, the role or position of judges and police corruption.

This is not the place either to analyze Lindsay’s novels, or the way in which transposition in genres was made, although it is worthwhile mentioning some substantial differences. In the novels, the protagonist is much more sombre than in the series; in the former he is shown as someone with a split personality, and (not a minor detail) his sister knows his secret and covers up for him.

In the series the character Dexter has his only psychotic trait the ability to see and interact with his death father, who behaves as a sort of guardian of his moral code -we shall return to this subject later-; on the other hand he has an inner conflict which becomes more intense as the seasons go by: he wants to be normal and stop feeling the compulsion to kill and tries hard to experience feelings. His sister not only does no know his secret but she is not even aware of the truth; and although it is true that some characters discover who Dexter is, they all end up dead, even if it is not Dexter who kills them[v]. Finally in the novel the secondary plots and parallel plots are much more elaborately developed while drawing away notoriously from what happens to them in the series.

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[i]The best-known is Time Blender (1997) written with Michael Dorn, the actor who played the role of Worf in Star Trek the Next Generation (1987-1994).

[ii] Darkly Dreaming Dexter, Random House, 2004;  Dearly Devoted Dexter, Random House, 2005; Dexter in the Dark, Random House, 2007; Dexter by Design, Random House, 2009;  Dexter is Delicious, Random House,  2010.

[iii] Dexter is produced by Showtime in association with CBS. Its Pilot episode was broadcast on the 1^st. October 2006 and to this date it has been on the air for five seasons each composed of 12 episodes. The series was created by James Manos Jr. co-producer and script writer of the first season of The Sopranos (1999-2007) and co-producer of The Shield (2002-2008); Produced and written by Daniel Cerone, Sara Collecton, Charles H. Egllee, John Goldwing, Michael C. Hall, Chip Johannessen, and Many Coto,  Executive Producer and Script of Star Trek Enterprise (2001-2005) and 24 (2001-2010).

[iv] A different case is that of Sylar (Zachary Quinto) in the fantastic series Heroes, because the people he kills are identical to him only in their condition of mutants.

[v] With the only exception of Lumen Pierce (Julia Stiles), in the Season five.