I’ve found recently that Mondays are getting crowded where my TV schedule is concerned. Used to be I’d check whether Castle and How I Met Your Mother were repeats, then either in-between or instead of them catch up with other shows on tape. Now that 24 and Chuck are back on the schedule, plus the new Life Unexpected, the night is more likely to feed the backlog than help clear it out.
Castle, which airs 10-11 p.m. on ABC, is basically the same show I reviewed back in August. Fine by me.
“She’s a reader of rights. He’s a writer of wrongs. They’re New York’s most unlikely crimefighting duo.”
I was thinking of that kind of grand old trope even before it showed up in a promo for ABC’s Castle. The series, created by Andrew Marlowe, wears it well.
He? Richard Castle, best-selling mystery novelist, divorced with a child and a playboy reputation, struggling with writer’s block. She? Homicide detective Kate Beckett, single, stoic, slightly star-struck over meeting Castle but determined not to show it. After his insights help her unit crack a spate of murders based on his books, arrangements are made for him to shadow Beckett as inspiration for his next one — to her consternation, when procedural friction and romantic tension ensue.
You may recall Fillion from his stint a year or so back as husband to Dana Delaney’s Katherine on Desperate Housewives, and he achieved cult fame as a starship captain in the Han Solo mold with the 2002 Fox series Firefly (short-lived, but brought to the big screen in 2005 as Serenity). I’d first encountered him as evil incarnate in the final season of Firefly creator Joss Whedon’s Buffy the Vampire Slayer, so it was strange to see him playing a good-natured gynecologist both on Housewives and in the charming 2007 indie film Waitress (highly recommended, with a delicious turn by Keri Russell in the title role, although terribly bittersweet due to the loss of writer/director Adrienne Shelly before its release).
It’s clear from interviews that the latter roles are closest to Fillion himself, but he pulls off roguish charisma effortlessly. He has real chemistry with all three of the series’ leading ladies: Susan Sullivan, the stage and TV veteran who plays Castle’s fluttery diva of a live-in mother; Molly Quinn as his grounded, insightful teenaged daughter Alexis; and most crucially Stana Katic, a relative unknown who’s absolutely riveting as Beckett. Beckett’s captain and co-workers are far less vividly drawn, but they’ll likely get their turns in the spotlight in the coming season.
