Cable television has always been the place for visionary directors and writers to try out cutting-edge themes and photographic techniques. The latest to pioneer a new genre is Adam Rifkin, whose new series Look is based on his 2007 indie film of the same title. The first season aired on Showtime at midnight on Sundays. The late hour is appropriate, as the gritty subject matter, raw language and unashamed nudity are definitely not suitable for the family hour.

In the opening credits, Rifkin reminds the viewer that Americans are reportedly captured as much as 200 times a day by the 30 million surveillance cameras that surround us. The series is shot completely from the point of view of cameras in malls, dressing rooms, school parking lots, ATM machines, grocery stores, cop cars, elevators, offices, storage rooms and cell phones.

The key to the show’s success is its tight editing. Stringing together film from many different security cameras, often in split screen, and following the characters through their daily lives – and making it interesting – is a daunting challenge that somehow Rifkin pulls off. It’s not a true reality film, but it is a genuine representation of it. This is a scripted show shot like a documentary, but it feels more true to life than the “reality” programs that populate prime time television.

Perhaps the movies that Look best can be compared to in structure is Crash or Traffic. Using mostly unknown actors, Rifkin interweaves several storylines that intersect only for brief, critical moments in time. Watch our characters cheating on spouses, shopping, and stalking others is the ultimate voyeur fantasy. The series opens at a mall with a security office following a pair of spoiled teenage girls (Ali Cobrin and Sharon Hinnendael) into a dressing room who are unaware security guards are ogling at them as they undress. When they attempt to shoplift their new outfits, they are surprised the guards are right there to make the arrest.

We see a manipulative TV news director setting up his weatherman (Robert Brown) to be fired for cause, since he is too popular to be just let go. We watch transfixed as Sheila (Claudia Christian), one of the more unlikeable (spelled “s-p-o-i-l-e-d b-i-t-c-h”) characters, who cheats on her husband and feeds her cocaine habit every afternoon, while her child gets bullied at school.

Then there is the 7-Eleven night-shift employee, who dreams of becoming a rock star and invites 200 Facebook friends to his store for an impromptu concert. The cameras impassively show his frenzied fans wrecking the place.

Rifkin also likes to misdirect our emotions. Our favorite character is a homeless man, going about his daily scrounge for food and shelter. One day he courageously thwarts a rape in the subway. Unfortunately, in a later episode he gets run over by a car driven by a drugged-out Sheila. Another character drives a cab and starts out really likeable, but later is revealed to be a predator and the rapist police are seeking (still uncaught at the end of the first season.)

Somehow it all works. Despite the fact there are few characters to root for here, you can’t resist watching what they will do to each other next. That, of course, is the point. You can’t NOT “look!”