Castle – Season 1
Rick Castle is a popular author of crime novels who’s about to get his latest book – in which he kills his lead character – released when the cops show up at his door to ask for help as someone has decided to commit a murder and set up things in a similar way as is described in one of his older books.
Castle decides to help and gets teamed up with the attractive Detective Beckett and after a while he gets so intrigued by her he decides to use her as muze for his next books. After a call with his friend, the mayor, he gets full access to the New York police department and gets teamed up with Beckett who sees he’s of good use to solving crimes thanks to his “out of the box” thinking.
Sound and Vision:
We’ve gotten used to decent quality from TV shows on DVD and Castle doesn’t disappoint. Solid black levels, natural colors and sharp images for DVD. Good stuff.
The 5.1 track does a good job as well with quite a lot of use of the surround speakers in each episode. The subwoofer doesn’t get a lot of action but that’s to be expected with a TV show like this.
Extras:
– Write-Along with Nathan Fillion
– Whodunit: The Genesis of “Castle”
– Bloopers & Outtakes
– The Godfather of Castle
– Audio Commentary
Although it looks like there’s some decent extras, the audio commentary tracks are by far the most interesting.
Conclusion:
Life, The Mentalist, The Closer, … we’re getting flooded with crime shows that feature a specific individual who has an “edge” that combines crime solving with a funny twist. And now we’ve got another one: Castle with the ever-great Nathan Fillion. The stories are solid and the supportive cast do their job well, but what makes this series really jump out is the great work of Fillion and Katic who do an excellent job in playing off against each other.
Just like in most other series, there’s an arc that runs as a red line through the show (in this case being the murder of Beckett’s mother) but with only ten episodes in the first season, there’s little emphasis on that and more on the building up of the relation between Beckett and Castle, something that works out very well.
As the other series we mentioned above, Castle is a solid crime fighting series that has one specific detail that makes it stand apart and we can’t wait to see more. Good stuff!
7.0