Michael C. Hall in a scene from the new series Dexter: New Blood, premiering Nov. 7 on Showtime.Kurt Iswarienko/The Associated Press
Endings are hard. The endings of some series are discussed for years, and the ending of Dexter in 2013 was widely discussed and disliked. The central character faked his own death and was working as lumberjack in Oregon, far from his Miami stomping ground.
Back then I interviewed Michael C. Hall, who inhabited Dexter Morgan so well – the orphaned boy, grown to be a childlike man who needs to kill but operates by a code. The code was established by a stepdad who recognized the killing instinct in his son – Dexter must never get caught; Dexter must kill only other killers who cannot otherwise be stopped; Dexter must be certain of his victim’s guilt.
Hall said, “The ending honours the story, but endings are always tricky.”
The 21 best TV series to stream so far in 2021
Now comes Dexter: New Blood (Sunday, Crave/Showtime, 9 p.m.) and it was inevitable. Not because the original ending seemed askew and inscrutable. But because in the streaming wars, there’s huge demand for content and, clearly, the Dexter Morgan story could be mined for more rich material. On the evidence of early episodes, that’s been achieved.
Our antihero is now known as Jim, a laidback guy working at a fish and game shop in tiny Iron Lake, N.Y. He’s got a girlfriend (Julia Jones) who is the local police chief. But, you know, Iron Lake has a Twin Peaks feel to the place and something weird is going on. Women have gone missing. Also, for Dexter, the son he abandoned when he fled Miami has arrived and is now a teenager. Jim worries that the boy Harrison (Jack Alcott) has inherited his inclinations. And then there’s Dexter’s dead sister Deb (Jennifer Carpenter) who is haunting him and is as acid-tongued as ever.
The notable aspect of Dexter: New Blood is that it doesn’t aim for glumness. There’s wit and a touch of pulpy wryness to the shenanigans. It is at times deeply serious – the setting is used to explore First Nations issues. But it lacks the grave tone of such recent series as Mare of Easttown and American Rust. Can Dexter Morgan, now masquerading as nice-guy Jim, be redeemed? There’s some fun to be found while waiting for an answer.
Also airing/streaming this weekend
Four Seasons Total Documentary (Sunday, MSNBC, 10 p.m.) is an absolute blast, a must-see, and a reminder of one of the more chaotic, bizarre events of the last days of the Trump presidency. It all happened exactly a year ago. As votes were still being counted in Pennsylvania and with protestors causing chaos outside the count venue, another venue became the focus of international attention. The Trump campaign announced that Rudy Giuliani would hold a news conference, to amplify concerns about the vote count, at Four Seasons Total Landscaping, a small business in Northeast Philadelphia. It was a debacle and became comedy gold. Obviously, the conference was supposed to be at The Four Seasons Hotel, right?
Not so fast. As this wonderfully cheerful and sometimes startling doc explains, the debacle changed the lives of the Four Seasons’ owner Marie Siravo, her son Mike and the small number of employees. The story is told from their perspective. They’re ordinary, honest and cheerful people. “Imagine that, my garage door made history,” Marie says in the opening. Her sales manager, Sean Middleton, says he was at a men’s Bible study class when he got “the phone call.”
It was the Trump campaign. Sean and the Siravo family were bewildered but they said yeah, their premises could be used. Numerous reporters covering Trump talk about the chaos and weirdness. The Siravo family talk about how they became the target of much hate. Then, things turned around. The how and why of that makes this a great story and it’s delightfully told.
The Dissident (streams on CBC Gem from Friday) is the much-admired documentary (by Bryan Fogel) that sets out to “expose the labyrinth of deceit behind the murder of Washington Post journalist Jamal Khashoggi.” For a time, it looked as though few would see it, as Netflix, Amazon and Apple declined to stream it. Fogel has asserted they were probably afraid of offending Saudi Arabia, where Khashoggi was from. It unfolds like a well-told thriller and is absolutely damning in its portrait of Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman. Not an easy watch, but a searing look at what led to the grisly murder of Khashoggi at his country’s consulate in Turkey.
Finally, if you’ve missed Year of the Goat (Saturday, CBC, 10 p.m. on CBC Docs POV) before, it’s jolly and charming: “Five dairy goat breeder families juggle their farms, work and an intensive show season while caring for all of their two – and four-legged – kids.”
Plan your screen time with the weekly What to Watch newsletter. Sign up today.