Dexter

If you haven't seen this Showtime original series, the second season of which we've been watching lately, you should definitely check it out. Mind you, the protagonist is a serial killer, which might put off some folks, but he's as good a serial killer as one could be: he kills only bad people.

What's amazing about this series is the way it lets you into an alien mindset. Michael C. Hall does an amazing job with the title character, with every word and movement contributing to his performance. The supporting cast is also uniformly excellent.

One way the show makes its subject matter bearable is by being quite funny, both at times on a line-by-line basis and in the situations that arise as Dexter tries to live among humans--while feeling he is not one of them.

You will see a lot of blood, many acts of violence, and some grotesque mutilations, but, hey, it's about a serial killer. As long as you can take those things, I recommend the show.

I also recommend the Jeff Lindsay novels that inspired the series, though the third (and to date most recent) of them is the weakest. The show and the books are not the same, but they share the same spirit and many of the same virtues, and that's about as much as any author could reasonably ask for.