THE (BLOOD) TIES THAT BIND! 'DEXTER' SEASON SEVEN ARRIVES ON UK TV

The deepest cut yet? DEXTER (Michael C. Hall) is back. Image: SHOWTIME.

You can’t choose your own family-that’s a fact of life!- and Detective Debra Morgan (Jennifer Carpenter) will find this out the hardest way possible in the seventh and penultimate series of the dark comedy drama with a killer attitude, back tonight on the UK’s FOX channel.

The fairer sex continues to be our Dex’s Achilles Heel-most notably with his confused feelings for his sister, and vice versa, as she tries to come to terms with his killing ethics and simultaneously battling against her dedication as a policewoman in not arresting him straight off the bat, and just as a new relationship enters his life in the form of Hannah McKay (Yvonne Strahovsky).

The family man killer with a heart of gold and a twinkle in his eye, so well personified by Michael C. Hall, is going to feel the pressure of his life, career, and those he cares for when additional bloody friction comes via the arrival of several deranged newcomer baddies from Eastern Europe with their own personal code of honour and brutality (with hopefully another terrific TV success for Ray Stevenson after his fine work for HBO on ROME a few years back), as well as the police reinvestigating the previously thought case-closed work of the Bay Harbour Butcher from the series recent past, which had once successfully shielded Dex from further pursuit. Now it looks like Dexter’s handiwork and cover-ups will be coming back to haunt him big time this season!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8R9LI8yAp4c

DEXTER just wouldn’t be the same without the oncoming high body count and its harmonious, often symbiotic, black humour and clever, often never see it coming dark twists and turns. Though let’s hope that the show is firmly back on form this year by the writers/producers, after last year’s mixed story-telling success.

DARK PASSENGERS! 'DEXTER' SEASON SEVEN

Behind the veil. The true calling of DEXTER (Michael C. Hall)  is finally, shockingly discovered by sister Debra (Jennifer Carpenter) in the show's seventh and penultimate season. Images: SHOWTIME.

Stumbling plotting and a series of all too-conveneient happenstances may have hampered the overall effectiveness of our serial killing hero DEXTER's previous sixth season for SHOWTIME, but they did at least deliver one of the best cliffhanger season endings yet for the titular hero, always played with a recognisable and enjoyable twinkle of heart and murderous, but heroic, serial killing dedication by Michael C. Hall, what with the blood splatter expert's wayward sister, potty mouthed detective Debra (Jennifer Carpenter) finally and shockingly discovering the truth about her adoptive brothers weird foibles, unexpected disappearances and occasional unnerving manner during their last case against the cruel, blood soaked rein of Doomsday Killer Travis Marshall (Colin Hanks), literally walking in on Dexter in his abandoned church lair as he finally sunk the knife into the end of the world predicting looney!

Emotionally unstable and uniquely vulnerable since the death of her lover, world weary Detective Frank Lundy (Keith Carradine) and then betrayed by her current sex-mad beau, Joey Quinn (Desmond Harington), Deborah, almost paralleling her adoptive brother's mindset, has been travelling on a dark and lonely path, despite what should have been one of the best times of her life: her promotion to detective and department boss creating a tense situation of mistrust from her friends and work colleagues whom she's now superior to, and feeling reined in by her former boss Maria LaGuerta (Lauren Velez), who's always butting in unhelpfully and cashing in politically with the top floor management on her rookie commander's occasional successes. And now, during all this, she finds out that her number one family bed rock, despite his weird moments, is a serial killer! Oh, how Jeremy Kyle would become a serial killer himself to get this duo on his show...

Dexter Season 7 Trailer (HD) - YouTube

New villains in Miami: Ray Stevenson as Isaak Sirko and Jason Gedrick as George Novikov.

Behind the scenes, the shows always enthusiastic writing team have been carefully building up Debra's mind-fucked love for her brother in the weirdest kind of way possible that hasn't been seen since Luke Skywalker uncomfortably (and regrettably with the passing of time and the eventual family revelation) kissed his sister-to-be Princess Leia in THE EMPIRE STRIKES BACK! Adding new layers to Jennifer Carpenter's always quirky performance and character, it's going to be interesting to see whether she'll continue to care and protect him after what's been discovered. Will this be the final crack in her psyche? And just what will such an emotional confrontation do to Dexter, both as a man, a father (to little baby Harrison and his adopted children) and his career in the police force? Hopefully giving the series an adrenaline kick, it's going to be a blast seeing how this particular and fan popular family dynamic, so crucial to the series in the past, will be affected.

A shoulder to bleed on. Dexter seeks solace with girlfriend Hannah (Yvonne Strahovski)

Guest starring ROME star Ray Stevenson as a psychopathic Ukranian gangster adding his own brand of chaos to the mix, Jason Gedrick as the manager of an elite gentleman's nightclub where a major murder takes place, and Yvonne Strahovski as Hannah McKay, Dexter's new love interest, possibly with as dark a heart as her new beau, plus the return of Josh Cooke as Dexter's simmering new enemy, jealous wannabe crime profiler and computer expert Louis Greene, this new season, specifically designed to tie into the eighth and final run of the series next year, looks set to send viewers once more down an interesting but no less compellingly macabre, and often darkly funny, new direction.

Season Seven of DEXTER arrives on the UK's FOX channel in 2013.

Check out the DEXTER: EARLY CUTS webisode series: New Episode of Dexter Early Cuts Webseries | Daily Dead

KOOL TV BABE OF THE WEEK: 'DEXTER's JENNIFER CARPENTER

No fan of "f+++ing a++holes!" Jennifer Carpenter as the potty-mouthed Debra Morgan in DEXTER. Images: SHOWTIME.

In all honesty, I have to say that I've found this current sixth season of the hit SHOWTIME series DEXTER, showing exclusively on the FX channel in the UK, a little disappointing. At least the most disappointing since its second year, where, at that time, it took a while for the show to find itself and regain it's killer identity (excuse the reference!) after what had been a superb showcase premiere season. Here, the mostly padded out, occasionally wandering off base year six hasn't been as enthralling as the John Lithgow showpiece that was year four, or even the group evil led by Brit Jonny Lee Miller in year five, failing to capitalise on a promising story linked to religion and the doomsday prophecies with what also should have been a terrific duo of villains (Edward James Olmos and Colin Hanks). There have been a few good twists ands turns here and there, and some cool gross-out moments, plus the series looks as stylish and well-made as ever, but I expected that little bit more as Year Six reached its penultimate episodes. The promise of an apparently very strong finale to wrap it all up, however, gives me hope, especially as the series now has a locked in end date set for year eight (year seven is just about to start Stateside), so expect the dramatic fireworks to begin as Dexter's life as a serial killer will surely, inevitably, be discovered. Just how the ramifications of this happening will play out, and how it will affect the lives of his family and friends, is unknown, but I'm sure the blood will continue to flow and the body count of his wanted villains will increase just as we viewers want it to. There's still lots to explore in this darkly comic universe...

Debs on the case with Dexter (Michael C. Hall), Quinn (Desmond Carrington) and  Masuka (C.S. Lee).

Dexter rescues Debra, and vice versa, from a gas attack in a dramatic scene from the Season Six episode Talk to the Hand.

Whatever happens down the path to hell, though, one great constant for DEXTER has been its excellent series casting, and we couldn't have been better blessed with its lead actor choices than we have with the terrific Michael C. Hall as Dexter Morgan, a character now firmly established in TV history as everyone's favourite adaptable serial killer with a heart who tries to maintain a balance between his blood lust and his humanity, with an ultimate destiny not yet revealed, whilst Jennifer Carpenter has been a quirky and to-root-for delight as the determined, brave, fouler than foul mouthed, but generally kind-hearted and loyal sister, Debra. Debra has had quite a tough year in season six, in a period which saw her relationship to fellow policeman Joey Quinn (Desmond Harrington) disintegrate during her sudden and unexpected rise up the ranks to the position of Homicide Department lieutenant, a situation which often puts her at odds with her squad comrades and particularly with her ex-boss, Maria La Guerta (Lauren Velez), on matters of judgement, criminal procedures and the allocation of manpower in solving crimes (especially to violent and gory events linked to the all-important Doomsday Killers, and another murder which has covered up links to Police Captain Matthews (Geoff Pierson)). All in all, such work and emotional pressures/conflicts have led to the gradual death of any kind of life for Debra outside her career, of which she is also seeing a police appointed shrink after a violent incident earlier in the season, where she was forced to take a life during a violent nightclub gun battle. From all this rising emotion, her feelings for Dexter, her late father's adopted son, have started to dwell and ferment in her mind as she discovers that he has been just about the one loyal and loving constant, and positive factor in her life during all these difficulties. But are such stirrings indeed just because of her weakened frame of mind? Nothing more than a mild transience? Or are the series producers planning something so dark, and possibly so tragic, that it wouldn't look out of place in the kind of finale that Thomas Harris wrote for FBI agent Clarice Starling and serial killer Hannibal Lecter at the end of the love it or hate it HANNIBAL novel? Audiences will find out sooner rather than later, I think, in a scenario that will no doubt be a great and rewarding challenge for the talented and lovely Miss Carpenter before she continues on with a promising film career...