When: Sunday, 9.30pm
Where: The Box, Sky
Also: Repeat screening of series four finale, 8.30pm, Box, Sunday
Michael C. Hall's remarkable turn as Dexter Morgan, the Miami police forensic technician who's a vigilante serial killer on the side, continues with the fifth season of television's bloodiest drama.
The fourth-season finale (repeated before the fifth's first show on Sunday) saw the normal family life he had created came crumbling down with the murder of his wife Rita by Arthur "Trinity" Mitchell.
Discovering Rita's body in their blood-stained bathroom, Dexter realised that his infant son, like he himself, had witnessed his mother's killing.
In the opening episode Dexter not only has to break the bad news to his adoring step-kids, but his behaviour is raising suspicions with his detective sister Debra (Jennifer Carpenter, Hall's wife since 2008) and some of the rest of her squad.
The Golden Globe-winning Hall had his own brush with mortality when he was diagnosed with Hodgkin's lymphoma last year, but says after chemotherapy the cancer is in full remission.
The series was originally based on Jeff Lindsay's series of Dexter novels, but diverged from the books after season one, and in its previous four seasons the title character has executed some 60 of his fellow psycho killers.
In season five, first on his list - just as soon as he has hired a nanny for his boy Harrison - seems to be a local council worker who may have something to do with a series of beheadings and bodies turning up in barrels.
New actors joining the cast this season include Julia Stiles (The Bourne Trilogy) who becomes the new woman in Dexter's life, Jonny Lee Miller (Trainspotting, Eli Stone) and Peter Weller (Robocop) as a troubled Miami Metro police officer who gets caught up in an internal affairs investigation.
Stiles plays Lumen Pearce, a woman who may or may not be this season's answer to previous Dexter villains like John Lithgow (Trinity) and Jimmy Smits (assistant district attorney Miguel Prado). "Right from the beginning, Luman and Dexter are bound together in a serious way that has a ripple effect throughout the season," Stiles told the US TV Guide.
- TimeOut
