Heroes is probably the best—and strangely, the most believable—of the new spate of ensemble cast-driven, story-arc-heavy prime-time dramas that sprang up in the wake of Lost. It follows the messy entanglements and tribulations of a group of regular folks who discover that they have extraordinary powers. A cop who never listens discovers he can read minds. A politician running for the Senate can fly, but it’s not going to help him get elected. A young mother who needs to be in two places at once all the time develops a ruthless and superhumanly strong alter-ego. A young cheerleader can’t die, no matter how many tall buildings she throws herself off. And, most endearingly, a nerdy Japanese salary-man who can bend time and teleport anywhere realises he must dedicate his powers to the cause of justice.

For a show about people with super-powers, Heroes is strikingly restrained. It uses the limited budget of television to depict super-heroism sparingly, and with great subtlety. It also deftly evokes the stylisation of comic-book pen-and-ink art through cinematography that etches intense shadow lines into flat colour.

Heroes also draws from other recent television obsessions: the concern with the forensically violated human body. There are numerous scenes featuring the medical examination of gristly remains — but the visual and narrative conventions of these scenes are turned on their head, in a way that owes more to the X-Files than CSI. In one blackly humorous and intensely disturbing sequence, Claire, the invulnerable cheerleader, wakes up on a autopsy slab and must hurriedly re-assemble her body as a medical examiner has already begun work on her.

Dexter is a hero. Kind of. He’s actually another forensic pathologist who specialises in blood-splatter patterns. But Dexter (played by Six Feet Under‘s Michael C. Hall) has a secret that’s far more disturbing than his day job. Unspecified childhood traumas made Dexter want to kill people. A lot. His adopted father, a Miami cop, discovered this when Dexter was a child and taught him to only kill the deserving — other serial killers. The premise is skin-crawlingly creepy and the show itself does not back away from exploring it in sickening detail. Dexter is essentially an incredibly warped version of Batman, with an alternate identity, traumatic origin story, and problematic moral code. Both are dissatisfied with the quality of official justice. Dexter is what Batman would be like in the real world: an unspeakable horror.

But as much as anything else, Dexter is a character study of a troubling and complicated individual. Dexter has a human side — or at least is very good at faking it; he doesn’t understand why his adopted sister (a cop like their father) is so fond of him, but he finds some comfort in it, and he repays her by teaching her how to manage office politics. Dexter is also puzzled by the complications of sexual and emotional intimacy, but has achieved an acceptable compromise through a relationship with an emotionally damaged single mother (played by Buffy’s Julie Benz). But does his seemingly unforced and unfaked affection for her kids inspire our sympathy or disgust?

Dexter’s cat-and-mouse game with another serial killer (who leaves neatly dis-assembled body parts in public locations for the police to find) has a far more curious and explicit erotic twinge. Dexter is pretty damned excited by the “ice cream truck” killer’s technique.

Dexter and Heroes both have a dedicated commitment to a sophisticated visual style, and an interest in exploring how superheroism can have an impact on a ‘real’ world. Heroes is cautiously optimistic, but Dexter — in linking torture to vigilantism and depicting the costs of setting one’s self above the confines of legality — is horrifyingly pessimistic.