Recommending a drama about a serial killer is the last thing I thought I’d ever do; there are already too many shows -- and not just crime procedurals -- that lean too heavily on this reliable old chestnut.

But to deny yourself the engrossing “Dexter” (9 p.m. Sunday, Showtime) based on its subject matter would be to miss out on one of television’s most fiendishly intelligent new dramas.

But be aware: The word “fiend” is used advisedly. Dexter Morgan, the creation of crime novelist Jeff Lindsay, is among the more compelling characters on the small screen. But he’s not likable in any conventional sense, and he knows it, so he works hard to seem normal.

 In fact, Dexter tries so hard to seem like a good guy that he works for the Miami police as a blood-spatter expert. And his quest to come off as a feeling, emotional person, not an empathy-free monster, is transfixing, thanks to Michael C. Hall’s intelligent, multi-layered performance.

Watch Dexter handing out doughnuts and making small talk with his colleagues; it’s a masterpiece of well-faked “human” behavior. Only one detective on the force gets the creeps from Dexter, which is a continual surprise to him -- aren’t the cops supposed to be able to sense who the bad guys are, Dexter wonders? And certainly, given his proclivities, Dexter qualifies as a very bad guy.

Dexter’s not your average “CSI” tech, you see. In his off hours, he has an unsettling hobby: After compiling incontrovertible evidence of their crimes, he kills people whom he knows have done -- and would continue to do -- terrible things. But does this make him a monster? That’s one complicated question.

Like most black comedies -- and “Dexter” is infused with the most pitch-dark irony on television -- the Showtime series is animated by a mixture of anger and amazement. By using a deadpan tone, Jonathan Swift famously communicated his fury at famine in Ireland the 1729 essay “A Modest Proposal,” in which he proposed that the adults of that starving nation eat their children.

Of course, Swift wasn’t really recommending dining on tots, but he knew that no one would read an essay called “Famine Is Wrong.” To get people’s attention, he had to channel his anger into satire, and that’s what Lindsay has done with Dexter.

What is a human being? Is it someone who feels a deep need to right wrongs? Dexter does that, often more effectively than the police officers around him or the overwhelmed court system, the failings of which he sees every day. There’s plenty of irony in the idea that a serial killer feels more visceral anger in the face of brutal crime than most of the cops around him, who range from competent to infuriatingly self-serving.

What makes Dexter so compelling is his self-awareness; he knows that it’s not normal to enjoy killing, even in the form of “taking out the trash,” as he calls it. His foster father, a former cop named Harry (whom we see in flashbacks), rescued Dexter from a childhood so bad that Dexter blocked it out entirely.

Harry recognized Dexter’s unstoppable murderous impulses and taught the boy to follow “the Harry code,” which involves killing only those who truly deserve to die. For all his faults, Dexter follows that code to the letter.

Dexter’s knows it’s wrong to enjoy killing, but it’s his lack of empathy that allows him to observe the people around him with devastating accuracy. This is one show that uses voice-overs well; Dexter’s dry, witty narration is so perfectly pitched that I immediately wanted to buy Lindsay’s novels to hear more of it.

“This guy may have exceeded my abilities,” Dexter notes approvingly of a new serial killer in town -- one who begins to play mind games with the blood expert, who recognizes a kindred spirit.

Dexter’s hunt for the other killer through the back alleys and bodegas of a down market Miami, his taut observations about human nature and his own quest to seem like a real person, not a “wooden boy” -- it’s all compelling stuff.

Though it must be said, this well-made show is as dark a study of human nature as television is likely to bring us for some time.