TV Jots

Romantic Crime Dramedy Premieres Tonight

ABC has a new romantic crime dramedy called Castle debuting tonight in the cushy post-Dancing with the Stars time slot, and it stars fan favorite and familiar Firefly, Desperate Housewives, and Dr. Horrible’s Sing-Along Blog actor Nathan Fillion.

Fillion plays bored best-selling mystery author Richard Castle, who gets the shock of a lifetime, as well as a prime opportunity to spice up his life, when he learns a copycat serial killer is reenacting murders from his novels in the real world. Now that’s a genuine shocker.

The predicament quickly becomes a glass half-full type of situation for Castle, however, when he decides to infiltrate the police investigation headed by intelligent and capable NYPD Detective Kate Beckett, played by Fillion’s fellow Canadian Stana Katic. If you’re a Heroes fan and have a very good memory, you might remember her as Israeli soldier and human electronic messenger Hana Gitelman from Season One and the show’s graphic novels.

Castle is getting quite a few comparisons to the 1980s series Moonlighting, which starred Cybill Shepherd as former model Madelyn “Maddie” Hayes and Bruce Willis as private investigator David Addison Jr., colleagues who clashed constantly and often flirted with romantic involvement as they ran a detective agency together. If Fillion and Katic can recapture enough of that earlier TV magic, Castle just might have some staying power. Currently, the first season will run for just ten episodes total, an average number for a midseason replacement.

Catch the series premiere of Castle tonight on ABC at 10:02pm EST, immediately after the two-hour 8th-season premiere of reality hit Dancing with the Stars. A sneak peek follows that includes the first 13 minutes of the show’s debut episode, “Flowers for Your Grave.” I haven’t seen the entire installment, so I have no idea how it unfolds. But, the footage below definitely has a nice visual style, always a plus to me.