“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).
