Castle - Season 1 [IMPORT]

Castle is a gem of a series: the tone is fun without being slapstick, the plots are serious without being boring, and the characters are wonderfully written and played. On the outside, it's yet another Cop + Random Expert show: Detective Kate Beckett works murders in New York; Richard Castle is a popular crime thriller writer with influential connections, who has just killed off his most famous character. A series of murders based on one of his books occurs, and Beckett goes to him for help. They don't get along - she's sharp and no-nonsense, he's laid back and imaginative - but they solve the case. Castle then decides to write a new series, using Beckett as inspiration, and gets himself permanently assigned to follow her around, much to her disgust.

The Castle/Beckett relationship is the heart of the show - they bicker, they argue, and yet they find they need each other. There's the inevitable romantic tension, but the show cleverly never lets it go too far. The murders they solve are as interesting as anything in other cop shows, and can be quite dark at times, but the fun is in how Beckett's police work runs up against Castle's annoyingly good intuition. The balance of the humour and the murder is extremely tricky to pull off, and the show gets it right time after time.

The other characters in the show aren't neglected either. Ryan and Esposito are junior detectives on the team, and although often in the background are well rounded and get good dialogue. Castle lives with his teenage daughter Alexis, who is sensible, mature, and generally more grown up than Castle. He is also lumbered with his mother, Martha, a dramatic social butterfly who occasionally pauses to give Castle some pithy advice on life. The use of his family really helps ground Castle as a character, and emphasises that he's just a tourist to the grimy world of crime.

This first season is a short 10 episodes, so is really worth checking out. You'll get excellent actors, dialague, and plots for your trouble.

I can heartily agree with all the other positive reviews of Castle; this is a great show and marks a return to Mal Reynolds-like* form for Nathan Fillion.

Although the idea of a crime novelist shadowing/working with an NYPD homicide detective is pure Hollywood boulderdash the show makes it work. What could easily have been a by the numbers affair is actually a well scripted effort that manages to mix light hearted character interplay with some very solid mysteries. The cast are uniformly good and it avoids resorting to hackneyed cliches. Although there is an undercurrent of mutual attraction between Castle (Fillion) and his initially unwilling partner Beckett the show doesn't labour the will-they-wont-they angle. Nor does it try to maintain forced antagonism between the writer and the cop in order to generate extra uneccessary drama. The fact that Castle and Beckett, although they bicker, genuinely like each other makes a pleasant change for this sort of show.

The producers have also taken the time to come up with decent mysteries of the week, with the tone of each varying. Some are quite lightweight whilst others are darker or more emotional, but they're all cleverly plotted and don't stick to a single formula.

Its a pity there are only ten episodes in this first season (it was what's called a 'mid-season premiere' in the US. 'Full season' shows run to 20+ episodes) as it could have easily have survived eight or ten more without outstaying its welcome. The fact that the next Season is 22 episodes long is to be welcomed.

If you're looking for a genuinely entertaining new show from the US, whether you're a fan of police procedurals or not, you couldn't do much better than Castle. Ignore the implausible scenario and just enjoy what is a funny, smart and often suspenseful TV show.

*Fans of Joss Whedon's Firefly - The Complete Series [DVD] [2003] and Serenity [DVD] [2005] will understand what I mean by that

Came across this series when holidaying in France in September 2011. Actually it was hard to miss given the cluster bomb of trailers French TV had going for it. I shall withhold comments re. local dubbing. But despite many an involuntary lip twitch I instantly took to Castle and Beckett's oddball chemistry. And right enough, next day when shopping for the usual dairy and grape items at the local supermarket my attention was immediately hijacked by shelf-loads of Castle Season 1 DVDs. Needless to say, I resisted for the time being.

So imagine my surprise when, once back in pie and ale country, no one had even heard of this series let alone offered DVDs for sale! A few days later they popped up on Amazon UK bearing the less-than-tantalising release date of 21. November. Luckily we're all Europeans now (huh?) so one quick detour to Amazon Germany later and my quest had found an end.

So. Worth my extra mile(s)? Definitely. It only takes half an episode to 'get' how this series works. The uneasy alliance between Rick Castle (the disarmingly suave novelist, aka Nathan Fillion) and the tough but inherently vulnerable detective Beckett (portrayed with amazing aplomb by a brilliant Stana Katic) really clicks, despite my initial (5 minutes) doubts. But what really makes this series shine is the witty yet thoroughly uncontrived script. Fillion's panache at delivering a whole volley of deadpan lines without a facial twitch is the grease to keep each episode sliding effortlessly from (semi-shocking) murder scene through often very clever twists and turns to its usually highly satisfying and sometimes heartwarming resolution. Katic never fails to convince as the ballsy but bottled-up cop ripe for an uncorking by Castle's unwavering cosmic charm. And even Castle's 'upside-down' mother/daughter sideshow with its ostensibly cheesy reek soon won me over because, well, it works.

If you liked Nathan Fillion in Firefly/Serenity there's a very high chance his Castle performance will squeeze your bananas. Those new to the cast and simply after the next dose of series gold dust with a twist could do a lot worse than giving Castle Season 1 a try. Once it's finally available in Britain, that is. Meanwhile I'll be ordering Season 2 from across the Channel again. Did I not mention that it too has been out there for a while?