Underplayed Gems
The whole movie catalogue

Films and series, searchable by what they are

← Back to the shop

Dexter (2006)

Dexter poster
Directed by
Steve Shill, Marcos Siega, Adam Davidson, Robert Lieberman
Genre
thriller, drama television series, police procedural
Country
United States
Length
8 seasons, 96 episodes
Rated
TV-MA
Rating
8.2 of 10 from 5,652 voters
Elsewhere
IMDb

How it feels

A Miami police blood spatter analyst secretly hunts and kills murderers who escaped justice. He maintains a normal life as a husband, father, and brother while satisfying his own homicidal urges by targeting other killers.

darktensegrittymorally ambiguousmethodicalsuspensefulchillingcat-and-mouse

What happens

Dexter is an American crime television series that initially aired on Showtime from October 1, 2006, to September 22, 2013. Set in Miami, the series centers on Dexter Morgan (Michael C. Hall), a forensic technician specializing in bloodstain pattern analysis for the fictional Miami Metro Police Department, who leads a secret parallel life as a vigilante serial killer, hunting down murderers inadequately punished by the justice system due to corruption or legal technicalities. The show's first season was derived from the novel Darkly Dreaming Dexter (2004), the first in a series of novels by Jeff Lindsay. It was adapted for television by James Manos Jr., who wrote the pilot episode. The series received mostly positive reviews throughout its run. The show has received multiple awards, including two Golden Globes won by Michael C. Hall and John Lithgow for their roles as Dexter Morgan and Arthur Mitchell, respectively. The fourth season aired its season finale on December 13, 2009, to a record-breaking audience of 2.6 million viewers, making it the most-watched original series episode ever on Showtime at that time. The eighth season originally served as the final season of Dexter ; the season premiere was the most-watched episode of the series, drawing more than 3 million viewers total. The series finale drew 2.8 million viewers, which at the time set a record for the largest audience for an original series finale in Showtime's history. Dexter has continued through an expanded franchise with further series. Two sequel series, Dexter: New Blood and Dexter: Resurrection, have aired from November 2021 to January 2022, and from July 2025, respectively, with Hall reprising the title role and Clyde Phillips as showrunner. A prequel series, Dexter: Original Sin, was released between December 2024 and February 2025, starring Patrick Gibson as Dexter. (from Wikipedia, CC BY-SA)

Trailer

More like this

This page is from Underplayed Gems. Not quite it? Tell the Catbot what you feel like watching and it picks from the whole catalogue, or browse by genre, country and year.

Lists: Korean thrillers worth the evening · Anime films beyond Studio Ghibli · Slow films for a rainy night · Horror that unsettles instead of startling · Series you can finish in a weekend · Nordic crime worth the subtitles · Good films that end in under 90 minutes · Documentaries that play like thrillers

Loading movies…

What should I watch?