Nathan Fillion Returns to the Small Screen in ‘Castle’

by Josh Roth @ 10:01 pm March 14th, 2009

Two of my favorite things in TV are procedural crime dramas, and Nathan Fillion, and here are they together at last! ABC’s new mid-season procedural dramedy Castle, starring everyone’s favorite hammer related superhero as a cocky pulp crime fiction writer who must help the NYPD when a killer starts killing straight from his books. Fillion is the king of snark, he plays the ultimate sleezy cheeseball, at the Dr. Horrible Comic-Con panel Joss himself said “Shatner, you’re time is done”.

Nathan Fillion plays Rick Castle, a full of himself best selling crime author with an attitude. A performance from any lesser actor would prove cliched at best, but the way Fillion plays it, Castle is both hilarious and interesting. There’s definitely something more to this character than his cheeseball personality. The question is can Nathan Fillion’s performance alone carry the show?

Since Fillion isn’t the only person with screen time let’s look at the other actors. Everyone else on the payroll is playing straight against Fillion’s cheese, so that balance works out fairly nice. Kate Beckett (Stana Katic), the hard nosed female detective seems a bit boring… She may prove to be the show’s weak point, unless she and Castle and keep up enough of a clever dynamic to keep the audience hooked week to week. Alexis, Castle’s daughter, is a pretty interesting character, since Castle is so immature she’s got to be the ‘parent’ in the relationship. There seems to be a good amount of give and take. I’m interested to see where that goes.

Writing is the other strong suit of Castle. It ranges from mild to extremely clever. The material is strong and made only stronger by the performances. We’ll wait and see if they can keep up the steam through a full season, but they’ve certainly spiked my interest.

On the surface Castle is like a more sarcastic version of Law & Order, but starring Nathan Fillion, and that elevator pitch alone has me hooked. My hope is the show can find it’s own niche and its heart before people start to tune out.

Tune in to Castle, Mondays at 10pm EST on ABC.