Castle (TV Series) (DVD)

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It's starting to feel like a Seventies' revival. On my review shelf sits "Life on Mars," a series about a NYPD detective who finds himself literally reliving 1973 after he's struck by a car. And then there's "Castle," this ABC-TV series that plays exactly like one of the old P.I. shows from the Seventies. So if you notice Stephen J. Cannell, one of the writers and creators of "The Rockford Files," playing poker in the first episode of this crime series which sports "Rockford"-style comic moments and romantic interests, it's because "Castle" creator Andrew W. Marlowe patterned his show after "Rockford" and "Moonlighting." Which raises an interesting question: Is it possible to go back in time to a kinder, gentler period in TV history when violence wasn't as pervasive and the whole CSI fascination the public seems to have developed with forensics hadn't begun yet? Sure, there are grisly murders here, but will a public now used to X-treme this and X-treme that warm to an old-fashioned series that de-emphasizes the oh-so-serious carnage and doesn't show every scalpel cut or needle poke that every coroner or medical examiner seems to routinely do these days?

I wouldn't have bet on it, but the answer seems to be yes, because the numbers were good enough to buy "Castle" a second season. And for a show that cast a couple of relative unknowns in the male and female leads, a 35th-place Nielsen finish is pretty good. Or as Larry David would say, "pretty, pretty, pretty, pretty good." So's the level of banter and chemistry--something that's been missing from crime shows these days as all that forensic seriousness blends better with melodrama than it does a breezy style like this.

Nathan Fillion ("Firefly"), who played Dr. Adam Mayfair in "Desperate Housewives," stars as Richard "Rick" Castle, a self-absorbed, arrogant crime novelist who basks in the attention. He autographs women's chests ("Call me when you're ready to wash that off") and acts like a twentysomething single, though he lives with his teenage daughter (Molly C. Quinn) and tippling mother (Susan Sullivan), a former Broadway actress. And boy, does he find it flattering that his novels have apparently sparked a copycat killer--someone who's doing away with people in exactly the same way as his crime novels.

Then there's Detective Kate Beckett (Stana Katic, "Quantum of Solace"), the lead investigator in the case who seeks out Castle and distributes copies of his novels (all from her private collection--she likes to read) to the other detectives working on the case. She's the typical no-nonsense cop, and he's the typical who-cares free spirit with a Peter Pan complex. But put them together and each one softens a bit. And it's the stars' chemistry, not anything that comes out of a forensics kit, that makes this crime drama work. Castle and Beckett play off of each other well, with banter never deteriorating into overlapping dialogue or awkward pauses. The stars seem to have a handle on their characters and know what they're going to say without having to think about it. That adds an air of spontaneity to an otherwise slick and formulaic crime show that's indeed a throwback to those Seventies' private investigator shows.

The premise is simple. You can't stretch a copycat killer over an entire season, unless you're the creators of "24," and so it turns out to be convenient that Castle killed off his main character in his last novel. Why? Because it occurs to him, as he's accompanying Beckett on that first case, that he could gather a lot of material by shadowing her and come up with a new character as a bonus. And he has the clout to make it happen, despite Beckett's kicking and screaming.

I don't know that I'd place "Castle" in the rare company of "The Rockford Files," "Simon & Simon," or "Magnum P.I.," but it's a solid show with brisk pacing. If anything, "Castle" could use a legitimate nemesis for the two, who begin to "play nice" fairly early in their relationship. And while mom Martha is a character, she doesn't intrude on Castle's life the way that dad Rocky did for Jim Rockford. If I were the screenwriter, daughter Alexis would get more involved too. The other thing that keeps this show in the second tier of cop shows is the supporting cast. Their personalities just aren't distinctive enough to add life. They're not bad, but when you consider characters like the snitch Angel and police detective Dennis from "The Rockford Files," those characters were strong enough to carry a scene even if Rockford was in the back room taking a nap. Here, the supporting cast stays in the background. And yet, it was a conscious decision, because even the guest stars are relative unknowns and non-descripts.

Ten episodes are contained on this Season 1 package, housed on three single-sided discs in a single-width DVD keep case that has one disc on the left inside cover and two overlapping on the right. Unfortunately, a listing of the episodes is printed on the inside cover (which is obscured by the discs), so you have to slide the paper out to see . . . and even then there's no annotation to remind you of the episodes.