The Best Show on Television

It's like with books, where you've got popular fiction and literary fiction. Popular fiction is the stuff that gets churned out for the masses, generally using tried-and-tested formulas and familiar genres to deliver a particular entertainment product to an eagerly awaiting market. There's nothing wrong with it, but it's generally considered limited in terms of artistic merit. Then on the other hand you've got literary fiction, where the author offers a truly original artwork with an engaging insight into the human experience. That's the serious stuff.

Literary television is a rare thing, simply because it doesn't generally equal great ratings. But in recent years there has been quite a surge of it, mostly due to the existence of HBO (see : The Wire, The Sopranos, Deadwood, Rome). The only problem is, most of those shows have ended or are about to end. Looking at the current shows that might continue to carry the flag, two spring to mind and neither of them are HBO shows. The first is, oddly enough, a network show named Friday Night Lights, but the second is yet another cable show, which I consider to the best television show currently airing.

The first season of Dexter was dubbed as everything from "mediocre" to "grotesque" by its detractors, but generally the critics agreed that it was one of the best new shows of the year (in most cases second only to the aforementioned Friday Night Lights). In twelve episodes from October to December 2006 we entered the mind of Dexter Morgan, a serial serial killer killer. No, that wasn't a typo. A serial killer who kills serial killers. If another character shows up who hunts down and kills people like Dexter, he'd be a serial serial serial killer killer killer.

Anyway, we went on to delve into Dexter's past and childhood, learning how he came to be the way he is. There were some scenes in the final episodes which ranked not only as the best television moments of the year, but of all time. The second season, currently airing, moves things forward in suitably unpredictable directions and continues to develop all of the characters in the show. Nothing happens to these characters that doesn't affect them in some way, and nothing about them feels false.

At the moment it's cable that seems to be the haven for television of this calibre, but if Friday Night Lights keeps soldiering on then the networks, and the viewers, may eventually begin to see the light. Otherwise I say we unleash Dexter on them.