Serial killer drama Dexter got away with murder when it hand-waved away an atrocious final season and started over with 2021’s Dexter: New Blood. The bloody good times continue with another sequel series, Dexter: Resurrection (Paramount+, Friday), which relocates Michael C Hall’s charming chopper to New York, where he crosses paths with a coven of serial killers.
It’s grippingly giddy viewing – and the ever-reliable Hall is joined by a high-wattage cast including Uma Thurman, Krysten Ritter and Peter Dinklage. There are also cameos from various figures from Dexter’s past – fans of the original show, which blazed a bloody path from 2006 to 2013, are sure to have fun ticking off the returning names.
Dexter arrived during the glory days of prestige TV – it debuted four years after The Wire and 12 months before Mad Men. But it never quite had the quality to rank alongside such classics, and its charms were generally of the ludicrous variety before it ultimately went off the rails – a decline in quality that has gone down in the annals of popcorn television.
Rock bottom came in the 2013 finale when Dexter vanished from his hunting ground in Miami during a hurricane, faked his death, and relocated to upstate New York. That’s where Resurrection begins after Dexter begged his son Harrison to kill him last season. That was to help Harrison expunge his own murderous instincts. He failed, however, and Dexter wakes in hospital with his child having vanished.
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He is happy to recuperate while interrupted by demons from his past. But when Dexter hears of the killing in New York of a sexual predator, he recognises the murderer’s methods as his own. Harrison (Jack Alcott) is on the prowl and seemingly continuing Dexter’s mission of using his gory gifts not for evil but good (by taking out the genuine monsters in society). And so it’s off to New York in search of his son – only to discover more than he bargained for.
Hall is solid as the blankly suave Dexter and delivers an impressive portrayal of a man with plenty bouncing around inside his head but with a cold emptiness where his soul should be. As with previous incarnations of the franchise, the going is thoroughly hokey – but it’s still tremendous fun. One of modern pulp TV’s great creations has never felt more alive than in the enjoyable Dexter: Resurrection.
