Our esteemed editor and I have a huge fondness for stupid TV series about people who solve crimes. One of our favourite games is to try and come up with the stupidest possible idea for a crime-solving team, duo, or individual. This game gets more and more difficult to play as more and more of the ideas get used. There's vampires, mathematicians, little old ladies, psychologists, novelists and even the occasional policeman all merrily catching murderers. This motley crew have recently been joined by Dexter - played by David From Six Feet Under, the eponymous Dexter is, of all things, a serial killer who solves crimes.

As a result of some thus-far unexplored childhood trauma, Dexter is left from a young age an emotional cripple driven by a powerful urge to kill. His kindly policeman father recognises his adoptive son's latent tendencies and being a nurturing, caring sort of parent, decides to teach the boy to channel his urges into the healthy and productive business of vigilantism.

The series (from the two episodes we have watched so far) seems to be genuinely well done. Dexter is authentically creepy, and his various social interactions with his co-workers, sister and girlfriend have a good sense of verisimilitude. I've got no idea what a real sociopath would talk like, but David-From-Six-Feet-Under seems to be doing a good impression.

I also find the fact that Dexter is, y'know, a serial killer much easier to take than I thought I would. He's sympathetically portrayed, and if I can sympathise with the paedophile protagonist of Lolita I can sympathise with a guy who is cut off from normal society and driven by an inexplicable urge to kill. What I can't get to grips with is the fact that he only kills people who deserve it.

The thing is, I think that there is a difference between sympathising with a character, or even thinking that they're cool, and actually declaring them to be morally righteous. I'm happy to play violent computer games (I'm garrotting my way through Hitman: Blood Money at the moment), or to watch violent movies (I thought House of 1000 Corpses was pretty damn cool, and thought that Sheri Moon Zombie was pretty damn hot in it). I don't think that there's anything at all wrong with watching and enjoying scenes of murder, torture and violence.

I do, however, think that there is something very, very wrong with the idea that there are some people who it is actually to torture and murder. I can enjoy watching helpless innocents get tortured by charismatic lunatics because nobody actually thinks that's acceptable behaviour in real life. I have no trouble watching a series in which the main character is a serial killer, I have real trouble watching at TV series where the main character is a serial killer but it's all right because his victims are all paedos and scumbags.

Now it is early in the series, and so I might be judging it harshly, and Dexter is clearly totally broken, and the father who turned him into what he is obviously had some serious issues, but when Dexter tracks down another victim and confronts them with their crimes you're obviously supposed to be on his side. His victims are always full of excuses "it wasn't my fault," they cry, "I couldn't help myself." And of course Dexter ironically replies that he can't help himself either. Then he cuts their heads off, and it seems a lot like we are expected to feel that justice has been served.

It all reminds me very strongly of that Bones episode where a serial killer "evades justice" by ... umm ... having several more crimes he committed brought to light and, presumably, granting a measure closure to several grieving families. But apparently the extra year by which he postpones his agonizing death is a victory for evil. Dexter similarly "balances the books" by killing people who were allowed to go free by the wicked liberal criminal justice system.

Dexter is a walking advertisement for the death penalty. He is needed because the system is weak and corrupt, and lets criminals get away instead of torturing them to death the way it damn well should. By day, Dexter is a forensic analyst, helping the police track down criminals, by night he's a serial killer, but these two callings are portrayed as complimentary, not contradictory. Indeed if anything it is his nocturnal activities which are the more noble, since they are not tainted by the restrictions of the "system". Although he describes himself as a monster, Dexter is presented as every inch the avenging angel, making the world a better place, one sicko at a time.

The really annoying thing about this is that it's totally unnecessary. The fact that Dexter spends his days hunting killers already makes it possible to sympathise with him, it takes the edge off his crimes just enough to make him a watchable protagonist. Having him only target people who have gotten away with murder crosses the line from exploring or illuminating his crimes to actively justifying them, and that causes serious problems for me. It also strikes me as profoundly unrealistic, even contradictory. If Dexter really has an irresistible compulsion to kill, should he really be able to keep it under control until he finds a suitably deserving candidate? How many murderers walk out of Miami courthouses in the average week?

Then of course there's the convenient way in which all his victims confess their crimes at the end, "you're right! I deserve to die! Please make the world a better place by decapitating me!" Again, I'm only a couple of episodes in so it might get better but at the moment it's a distinctly iffy moral message. If somebody looks guilty, they are guilty, and they need a good killin', and the Man doesn't have the guts to give it to 'em. The thing about vigilantes is that they get the wrong man more often than not. The thing about addicts is that they care more about getting their next fix than anything else.

Dexter is a profoundly unsettling show, not because it asks you to sympathise with a cold blooded murderer, but because it assumes that said murderer will be easier to sympathise with if he tortures criminals to death.