Palfrey's life

I've picked up a bit of a TV habit in the last few years (Admittedly, I'm talking about very little actual "when the programmes are shown I will sit down and watch" TV, but mainly Bittorrent and DVD box sets). It started fairly innocently, finally getting around to watching all of the DS9 and Voyager episodes that I hadn't seen because of the insanities of BBC2 and Channel 4. Later on, it progressed into things like Sex and the City, and Gilmore Girls; then we have back series of the Shield and the Wire; lots of Bleach and Naruto; and in more recent days I've been getting into lots of things that I'm actually watching (*shock horror*) as they happen week-by-week. Not being able to gorge on a half dozen episodes and having to wait has resulted in my finding more things. My software that's doing some of the auto-downloading for me is now up to 10 ongoing series, plus another 4 that will be showing more episodes next year some time. Occasionally I'm fussed about my lack of a social life, at other times I'm not so fussed...

The purpose of this post however is to share two series with you that you should be watching. The first is Heroes - originally dubbed "Ordinary people discovering extraordinary abilities.", now tagged as "Save the cheerleader, save the world". Superheroes, with some comics influence, but without the spandex or secret identities. It's pretty cool to see the whole thing tying together, and you can probably find HDTV rips for all the 9 episodes they've done so far still.

The second is Dexter. I've only watched the first episode so far, but it shows a vast amount of promise. Basically, the main character is a complete psycho with a thing for ritual vigilante killing. The daytime persona however is a forensic expert for the police. The interesting thing is the "normal" persona is a *complete* fabrication. Not a few lies here and there, but a complete mask. Dexter has massive emotional problems (in that he barely has any) - for example, here's a few lines from his internal monologue; "I wish she'd stop that. It's one of those mating rituals that I don't really understand"; "Normal people are so hostile". I'm used to crime drama stuff having screwed up characters (heck, I'm watching one of the CSI's, which is still fun despite their fictional usages of technology I saw 2 SenSys's ago), but this guy is a complete nutcase, and his craziness actually makes him a better forensic expert because he knows first hand how people are killing other people. It's an interesting variation on a market saturated by CSI clones.