TVSquad

This week in Jane After Dark, I caught up with season one of Castle. I'm a sucker for fun whodunits, especially when they feature great male and female characters who've perfected the art of the snappy banter. Specifically, here are five reasons why I'm loving Castle:

1. Nathan Fillion is boyishly charming. I've been a big fan of this Joss Whedon favorite since seeing him in 2005's feature film Serenity. I finally completed that awesome circle by watching Firefly last winter. Fillion has the ability to be goofy one minute and deadly serious the next. In Castle, he plays Richard Castle, a best-selling mystery author who's raising a 15-year-old daughter Alexis (Molly C. Quinn) -- and, in many ways, his free-spirited live-in mother Martha (Susan Sullivan), as well. Having killed off his latest fictional character, Richard found inspiration in NYPD detective Kate Beckett, after being called in to advise on a case. Now they're working as pseudo-partners.


2. Stana Katic is beautifully brainy. I still see Carla Gugino when I look at Katic, but she's slowly coming into her own identity for me. I love that she's smart and gorgeous, but also that she's the strong one of the Castle/Beckett partnership. She can make a perp cry like nobody's business. You get the feeling that she doesn't have to try too hard to resist his charms, but there's definitely a spark there. She seems both flattered and repelled by the fact that she's the inspiration for his new fictional character, and yet, she's starting to appreciate his attention to detail on cases. They make a good team.

3. Molly C. Quinn is adorably responsible. I love the relationship between Richard and Alexis, and the fact that she's much more sensible than he is. Sure, he'll evil-eye the boy who takes her to the prom, but that's only after she takes away the fake severed head he plans to freak the boy out with. And laser tag? What a fun dad.

4. The writing is captivatingly snappy. The writers have created such great characters on this show, and I love the dialogue between Castle and Beckett. Castle harks back to not only great whodunit shows like The Rockford Files and Columbo, but also classic film duos like Spencer Tracy and Katherine Hepburn in any of their films, William Powell and Myrna Loy in The Thin Man series, and Clark Gable and Claudette Colbert in It Happened One Night. It's a joy to watch Fillion and Katic perfect their craft.

5. I can watch it with my kids. I've never really gotten into the darker, modern-day crime procedurals because a lot of them are too dark and edgy for me to watch with my kids (a teen and a tween). Castle has all the elements of a great procedural, but it's also fun and fresh. You get a body and a crime scene at the beginning, but then it's really all about the characters and how they interact to solve the crime.

Castle: The Complete First Season is now on DVD, so if you haven't checked it out yet, I highly recommend it. Read Kona's review of the season two premiere, and look for my review of the next episode this week.

[Watch clips and episodes of Castle and other shows on SlashControl.]