As most people know, Dexter is a show about a serial killer who channels his unstoppable desire to murder into a public good—he only kills other killers, those who have escaped the normal procedures of justice. The show was both a critical and a popular success, largely because it combined elements that were both lurid and grisly (each season, Dexter kills lots of people, but also defeats one primary antagonist, often a truly terrifying psychopath) with a surprising sense of humor.

That combination is beautifully on display in the show’s title theme sequence, which consists of the most banal morning activities: Dexter wakes up, gets dressed, makes coffee and breakfast, puts his shoes on, and leaves his apartment—everything, however, is filmed with suggestive menace. As Dexter pulls his shoelaces tight, it briefly appears that he is garroting some helpless victim; even his T-shirt being pulled gives the impression of a face being smothered. Everything looks like blood—the real blood when he nicks himself shaving, but equally the blood orange he squeezes the juice out of, the hot sauce he sprays on his eggs.

The theme music itself is haunting melody with a great deal of chromatic movement set on top of a reggae beat; almost all of the rhythmic elements are Afro-Cuban and Latin, while the instrumentation is quite unusual—the main melody is carried by an Irish bouzouki, which has an especially sharp, metallic sound. Although it is plucked with a pick, it sounds almost hammered to me. Many commenters have suggested that the melody has a Slavic sound (which may be what gives it its “eerie” quality), which forms a memorable juxtaposition with the Caribbean sounds of the rhythm section. (And, if you missed it on a first viewing, check out the parody version that opened the fourth season, once Dexter became a family man with kids.)

In any case, played as a solo piece on classical guitar (or steel string in this recording), most of those rhythmic elements disappear in favor of harmonic support for the melody line. Arranging this for guitar was very straightforward—even the original key didn’t need to be changed.