Is it so sick to love this psycho?

Dexter, FX
Dirt, Five US
Cape Wrath, C4

For a show that airs here on a to-infinity-and-beyond channel such as FX, Dexter has had quite a bit of press recently - and far be it for me to buck a trend when I can attempt the critical equivalent of dressing like Victoria Beckham.

I haven't, incidentally, read any of Dexter's reviews but I can guess exactly what's being said. Half will be muttering something along the lines of: 'Omigod, this is a disgusting piece of television made by sickos for sickos that tells us everything we probably didn't need to know about the moral vacuum In Which We Live Now', while the other lot will probably be declaring Dexter 'a uniquely skewed work of darkly comic genius that tells us everything we probably didn't need to know about the moral vacuum in Which We Live Now'. And of course they'd both be absolutely wrong - or if not wrong, exactly, then simply missing the point.

So what is Dexter, and why all the fuss? 'My name is Dexter - Dexter Morgan ... People fake a lot of human interactions, but I feel like I fake them all. And I fake them very well.'

Played by Michael C Hall, who does a character with a double-life very beautifully, as anyone who enjoyed his David Fisher in Six Feet Under can testify, Dexter is a Miami forensics expert (apparently overlooked for CSI) who solves crimes by day, and turns serial killer who commits them by night.

There's something pleasingly wrong about Hall's almost-but-not-quite-handsome face (Jim Carrey by way of Jack Black), which means he was never in danger of landing the Jesse Metcalfe hunk-of-the-month parts (though not even Jesse Metcalfe gets those any more); was, in fact, born to play 'twisted', or at the very least 'conflicting'. You can't take your eyes off him in Dexter, which is one good reason to watch.

Anyway, Dexter's USP, vis-a-vis his little nocturnal butchery habit, is that he only kills killers, and, indeed, really horrid killers, preferably ones who have escaped justice on a technicality. When Dexter does his eye-for-an-eye stuff he takes himself and his work very seriously: 'Look, or I'll cut your eyelids right off your face ... soon you'll be packed into a few neatly wrapped Hefties [bin bags to you and me] and my own small corner of the world will be a neater, happier place ... a better place.'

Well, phew - at least he's not a psycho. Except he is - a very American Psycho sort of a psycho, in fact, but with a sweeter, more touchy-feely back story. Dex has suffered some sort of deep childhood nastiness but was lucky enough to be raised by good and kind foster parents, with 'Dad' a cop who, when he discovered the young Dexter's predilection for dog-killing and dismemberment, generously spun something positive out of a situation with very few obvious redeeming features, even suggesting gently to Dex that, in the absence of a scouting badge or a Duke of Edinburgh's Award Scheme for wannabe killers, that maybe he use his talent in a more focused, community-oriented direction?

This, incidentally, for those who may not be clutching their solar plexus and rocking to and fro in glee, is a comedy moment. It's handled very cleverly - because Dexter is nothing if not clever - and while never downright ho-ho funny, clearly takes enormous pleasure in subverting the idea of a consensus of good parenting'.

In Dexter's case there can only really be good-enough parenting. Thus he is raised with love, alongside a foster-sister, Debra, who also grows up to be a cop ('I want out of vice and into homicide ...') and for whom he cares as deeply as he is able, while also being fond of his pseudo-girlfriend (Dex doesn't do sex), serial rape-victim Rita, who is, according to Dex, 'in her way, as damaged as me'.

But the really shocking thing about Dexter, the show, is not only that it sells us a proper psycho and asks us to like him, but manages to pull it off, with the result that enjoying (or even merely appreciating) it may inadvertently shine a bright light into your own heart of darkness. By which I mean that if you really like this show, what does that say about you? (That you might be a tiny bit bad, deep down?); and if you hate it (and maybe even feel the need to shout about hating it) what's that all about, given that we've all been a bit bludgeoned by the 21st century and are therefore down with the sheer molten irony of being entertained by horror while living in such horrible times?

Personally, I think anybody who hates Dexter that much must really want to be liked, and may not have spent too much time examining their motives. Admittedly that's some heavy shit to lay at the door of even the most avowedly zeitgeisty TV drama, but I do think I might be on to something here. The makers of Dexter want a reaction from us - any reaction at all, they really don't care - and that, rather than the show's contentious, provocative subject matter, is where its amorality lies. Works for me, though: I both hate it and love it, which makes me feel bad to the bone.

And in case you need persuading of Dexter's classiness (fine acting and a great script, lush and gorgeous photography, smoooooooooooth editing), it might be worth taking a look at Dirt, in which Courteney Cox loses her humour and charm, but figures she can make up for it with an executive producer credit. Bad call, Courteney.

Hollywood's favourite subject is of course Hollywood, closely followed by the rest of LA, and when it gets it right it does so magnificently. I don't find it too much of a leap from Chinatown to Entourage, frankly, though big-screen purists may disagree. Dirt, however, can't hold a Swan Vesta to Entourage's title sequence, much less a single line of dialogue by Robert Towne.

Courteney is Lucy, a bitch straight from the Dallasty era of uber-bitchdom and the editor of a gossip rag called Drrt that really dishes it (Arrgh. Rrrreally annoying, that superrrfluous 'r'. And so unforrrgivably early Noughties).

'I don't care if you're on your deathbed, your mother's on fire or if we're on the brink of a nuclear war, I want those photos on my desk tonight!' Nuclear war? Grrr, lunch is for wimps.

Anyway, Dirt's retro-trawl through the Hollywood shallows, in which the usual stereotypical flotsam and jetsam sell their souls to LA-LA, is thoroughly offensive in a way that Dexter cannot be, because Dexter is quality trash and Dirt is merely bad, lazy trash that thinks it's hip but isn't and is thus about as interesting and relevant as a Spice Grrl reunion. I can only assume that David Fincher's guest appearance as the director David (Se7en, Fight Club) Fincher is because he's a friend of Courteney and her co-producer hubby, David Arquette (Jennifer Aniston pitches up later in the series). Courteney's got an excuse, Jennifer's even got one, but what's yours, Dave?

And because I am now feeling pretty perverse - I'm also fairly sure I'm meant to hate it - I have decided to love Cape Wrath, C4's absurdly overwrought new drama in which a clapboard housing estate is used as a chillingly sub-David Lynch white-picket-fence-style metaphor for all that is spooky and unexplained, something The Truman Show did on a slightly bigger budget years ago.

Tom Hardy, as the terrifying Jack Donnelly, was very dangerously, positively murderously, dark and twisted... and as sexy as hell with it. The bad news is that Tom-slash-Jack, the very best thing about Cape Wrath (in which, I'd hazard, a lot of very annoying things are going to happen, many of which will remain unexplained) also appeared to be dead by the end of the first episode, except that I refuse to accept this because it would be like losing Dexter during the pilot. Oh, and is it very wrong to love all the bad boys while despising the bad girls? Maybe Courteney should take up serial killing.

A proper Charley

Friday's fake Big Brother eviction seemed such an obvious tactic for prolonged domestic unrest that I couldn't work out why it had taken C4 so long to implement.

The appalling, yet unarguably entertaining Charley (if you like your entertainment to fit the traditional BB blueprint of equal parts charmlessness and ignorance) was ousted in the usual manner but received in complete silence ('God, what's going on? Where's the cheers, man?!') before being interviewed by Davina and then sent straight back into the house to face the music of, if not the spheres exactly, then of Satan's offspring, due to the fact that an eviction interview had, for the first time, been broadcast simultaneously to the housemates.

Yes, it was a gorgeously simple, smart and, presumably for Channel 4, successful piece of rule-breaking and gamesmanship. And boy did they need it because, post-Jadegate, nobody over 18 whose salary doesn't depend on it is going to be investing any emotional energy in Big Brother

I wax and wane a bit with BB every year, to be honest, but I always watch it, as I have this summer too. And for the very first time it has seemed ... what, precisely? Tired? Irrelevant? Moribund? A spent cultural force? Yup, all of those. And then who could possibly envy Channel 4 (or, indeed, Heat magazine) for its utter reliance on a format that has probably outstayed its welcome.

I say 'probably', however, because this is a show with a Glenn Close in Fatal Attraction-type ability to come back fighting from the dead, way past the point when you think that it should be all over.

That's precisely its strength - that and the fact that the cast of nonentities-turned-personalities continues to provide at least the possibility of some unformattable brilliance which will, I would imagine, be more than enough to guarantee its survival, against all the odds.

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