Much of the credit goes to the charming star, Nathan Fillion, who has created one of the most appealing characters (and best fathers) on TV. But this Castle is more than just its king: The whole cast sparkles, from work to home.

• Read the full article here www.usatoday.com

Here’s the print version of the article thanks to @SeamusDever on Twitter

Castle feature in USA Today (Click to enlarge)

…It is delightful to have the first season of Castle on DVD to re-watch enhanced with a nice selection of special features.  Most of us are already in love with the series, and enjoying the beginnings of the second season, but if for some reason you missed this first season, now is your chance to get caught up.

For those of us that are established fans, this is one to collect and to enjoy repeated viewings.  The dialog is fast paced, witty and on target.  The characters are interesting, and develop with each episode.  In spite of murders to solve, there is much humor in each episode, and the lives of the characters are as important as the task of investigating the crimes.

Susan Sullivan is priceless as Rick’s flamboyant actress mother who is helping him raise his daughter Alexis played by Molly Quinn.  Alexis is a wonderful teenager, and Ms. Quinn makes us believe in her as a real person and therefore care about her.  We look forward to the home scenes with Rick and his mother and daughter as some of the funniest and most touching interactions seen on television in a long time.

Well done both writers and actors for creating such fine entertainment, and to the rest of the production crew for giving them incredible surroundings and sets.

Castle: The Complete First Season is presented on three discs containing all ten episodes.  The running time is 431 minutes in English audio, but with French or Spanish subtitles available.

The special features for this first season include “Whodunit:  The Genesis of Castle” a featurette that looks at the creation and development of the series, “Misdemeanors:  bloopers and outtakes” from the series, “Write Along with Nathan Fillion” in a scene of art imitating life imitating art, Nathan Fillion spends a day with a real life mystery writer.  “Castle’s Godfather” is a special interview with the legendary mystery writer Stephen J. Cannell, who also makes guest appearances on the show.

And there are audio commentaries for selected episodes which give a lot more information about the series as well as illustrate that the crew and cast really seem to get along well.

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.

Full Article: www.tvsquad.com

[SNIP]… The episode s case was more intricate than we re used to — a strangled man s body was found in a tree, and on the way to the morgue, it was stolen from the medical examiner s van. Turns out the guy had lost his job and gotten into serious debt playing poker in Chinatown with Russian mobsters who offed him before he could fulfill his fast-cash duty as a drug mule. But really, the murder was just a set-up for Castle being his charming self and Beckett getting to save his ass while using a fake Russian accent and looking hellahot.

Castle s best quip came when he was watching the inside of a glove be dusted for fingerprints: “You want me to put on some music? Whenever they do this sort of thing on CSI, they always do it to music in poorly lit rooms. Kinda reminds me of porn.” The runner-up quote was when he revealed his theory about why the strangle marks were lighter in one spot: “Maybe he s fancy. Strangles people with his pinkie stickin out. [Hand gesture] Like tea.” Honorary mention goes to his reaction to Beckett s sexed-up appearance after she rescued him from a Russian mobster who d gotten wise to him at the underground card game he infiltrated: “Is it just my imagination or did you change?” (I love that Castle never tries to hide the fact that Beckett turns him on. If he did, no one ‚ including guest star/poker buddy Stephen J. Cannell, would buy it anyway.) He was equally clever off the clock. After he sulked about daughter Alexis (Molly Quinn) wanting to go see Fame with her boyfriend instead of him (SWOON), he made sure she knew he had dibs on A Christmas Carol, which made mother Martha (Susan Sullivan) ask if Hollywood had run out of ideas: “Well, they just optioned Asteroid the video game, so my guess is yes,” he said. “But Ryan Reynolds is playing the wee triangle, and he s good.” Do we think that was a Fillion improv?

To read the full article go to http://popwatch.ew.com

I just finished watching an early copy of this Castle episode and I gotta say that you guys are in for a treat.

Castle is trying to get back in the good graces of Beckett who is still mad at him for snooping into her business. The tension between them goes back and forth between playful and serious but never really goes into hostile.

The investigation in itself is alright. Nothing to write home about. Yet, it gives Castle the opportunity to be his usual mischievous self which is quite funny especially when he is sitting across Russian mobsters.

Overall, it is a great start for the second season of Castle. Stana Katic fans, look out for a very sexy moment in this episode where Beckett strips down and gets into a sexy outfit. Hubba Hubba!

In the meantime, watch a sneak peek of the CASTLE “Deep in Death” Second Season premiere episode airing Monday, September 21 at 10:00 p.m., ET. Also check out more pictures of the Castle season premiere.

• Full Article: www.daemonstv.com

NATHAN Fillion brings a very human touch to the hero of a new crime series.

US actor Nathan Fillion says no-one wants to watch super-cool, oh-so-perfect   heroes on TV any more. “People want to see heroes who have faults like everyone else,’’ he says.   Ã¢â‚¬Å“Superman’s a thing of the past.”

Fillion, a good-looking bloke who grew up in Canada, trained to be a high school teacher and exhibited a fine sense of humour while wearing a leather kilt on a TV talk show, openly embraces flaws, both personally and professionally.

Rick Castle, the role he plays in the new Channel Seven series Castle, is a definitely flawed but oddly appealing character. He’s a wildly famous murder mystery novelist who, out of sheer boredom of success, kills off the most popular character, then teams up with a woman detective to help catch a killer staging murders based on scenes from his book.

It sounds like stock standard TV fare, but Fillion makes it irresistibly watchable by playing Castle as a cocky, often abrasive, immature and self-serving but ultimately forgivable and likeable character.

“I enjoy him because he lives life with no fears of social awkwardness,’’ says Fillion.   Ã¢â‚¬Å“He doesn’t care what people think.” Are any of these qualities shared by the actor?

“Oh, I supposed so,” he says. “I watched the show with friends and they often look at Castle and say `that’s exactly the way Nathan would react in that situation’.”

Fillion always wanted to be an actor but studied teaching “because I thought I had to have something solid to fall back on”.

“But I dropped out four months before graduating because I auditioned for a soap opera and got the job. So that was the end of studying for me.

“It was like going in the deep end for me because soaps are the hardest things to do. You have to produce an episode a day and even if you’re not feeling the best, you still have to go on with the job. It can be really hard.”

But he describes his role as gynecologist Dr Adam Mayfair in the Desperate Houswives 2007 season as “one of the easiest jobs I’ve had”.

“The show didn’t keep me very busy. I was pretty much hired to stand around surrounded by beautiful women and it was wonderful. You know, in between takes they all sit around in a big house on the set. Wisteria Lane really exists.”

He was previously best known for his lead role as Captain Malcolm Reynolds in the television series Firefly and its film continuation Serenity. He also appeared in Saving Private Ryan and the romantic comedy Waitress.

“I’ve done a lot of roles and I never know from reading the script whether they are going to be successful.

“I mean, I never think of whether a series or film is going to appeal to ladies aged 18 to 35, or anything of that nature. Basically I read the script and take the role if it entertains me. It’s an instinct that I have relied on since I started in this business and it’s worked out pretty well.

“I love my life. I get paid well to do a job I adore, I live in LA in a house with a pool and go hiking in the Hollywood hills and I have lots of good friends. Every day’s an adventure.”

Source: www.news.com.au/perthnow

…Fillion, perhaps best known for his work on Joss Whedon’s series Firefly, is the drawcard here: his chemistry with Katic is snappy, effortless and already bubbling with unresolved sexual tension. Naturally, Castle and Beckett butt heads as they investigate the case — she wants him out from under her feet — but it’s pretty obvious they’ll end up sharing a bed, assuming the series stays on the air that long.

The premise is a bit different from your typical crime drama, though the rest of the series adheres to the rules of the format: the team investigates, there’s a twist, the killer’s identity is revealed amid a dramatic climax.

Full Review: www.yourtv.com.au

See, both Castle and Beckett started out underestimating each other, with Castle just seeing Beckett as hot “lady cop” and Beckett seeing Castle as this lascivious hack, but then they look beyond the surface and see more than what they first judged each other about. In fact, it seems to be a double wordplay, in that the show is about looking beyond the cover of a book.

Joining Fillion and Katic is an interesting and talented cast, each in an important supporting role to the titular character and his foil. One stand out amongst this impressive cast is that of Molly C. Quinn as Alexis Castle, Richard’s saged teenage daughter who seems more mature and grounded than her father, even though Fillion is very believable in the role as single-parent. The father-daughter interplay is one of the better subplots of the show, interplay that often leads Castle to a moment of epiphany in his current case or new series of novels, based on Beckett’s character, that are replacing his prior series, of which he just killed the hero within and ended.

In addition to Fillion, Katic, and Quinn, the supporting cast is full of excellent actors, such as Susan Sullivan as Castle’s eccentric mother, Seamus Dever and Jon Huertas as members of Beckett’s team, with Tamala Jones and Ruben Santiago-Hudson who, respectively, are the medical examiner and Captain that Beckett works with the most. While the show is not an ensemble show, there are times that it feels close to it, as the supporting characters each, as well as often, fill a scene quite well.

Source: www.tvbabble.com

In case you missed it, CASTLE stars the ridiculously-likable Fillion as Richard Castle, an equally-charismatic novelist who finds himself paired up with Kate Beckett (Katic), a tough-as-nails NYPD detective, in an effort to track down a killer who has been using the author’s best-selling murder mysteries as more of a “how-to” rather than the light and fluffy page-turners that they are intended to be.

Do sparks fly between our two leading players? Of course! Is the episode’s ultimate baddie utterly predictable? You bet’cha! Does Castle’s overly-sexed mother and too-smart-for-her-own-good teenager daughter scream television clichà ©? Absolutely!

Yet Fillon more than makes up for any and all of CASTLE’s shortcomings thanks to the perfect mixture of flirtatious eyebrow raising and a seemingly endless stream of witty one-liners. So much so that I can’t remember the last time I had this much fun watching an hour-long police procedural.

Don’t get me wrong: I wouldn’t trade in my mythology-laden, dense and disturbing hour longs such as BATTLESTAR GALACTICA, LOST, and TERMINATOR for anything. But there is simply something to be said for a show that just wants to have fun and doesn’t make me feel like a modern-day luddite for not realizing that the guy in that grainy black and white video on last night’s LOST was revealed to have been vaguely connected to the Dharma Initiative four seasons ago.

Full Review: http://thetvaddict.com

The same goes for the supporting cast, particularly Susan Sullivan (Dharma & Greg) as Castle’s gold-digging mother and Molly Quinn (My One And Only) as the precocious teenage daughter who cleans up the aftermath of his fun. ”If I have to keep bailing you out,” she warns her father after yet another trip to jail, ”you’re going to have to raise my allowance.” Kids.

Full Review:Â   www.miamiherald.com/entertainment

It helps, by the way, that the writers have placed [R]ick in a household with his daughter and his mother, each designed to ensure he comes across as more sympathetic than annoying.

His bright-but-not-bratty daughter (Molly Quinn) provides support, while his Broadway star mother (an entertainingly grand Susan Sullivan) brings him back to earth and lets us see why being a better parent is one of [R]ick’s drives.

As for Katic, she may overplay her character’s stern annoyance at first, but she loosens up in later episodes. Plus, she’s an incredibly beautiful woman, which helps hold your attention until the wittier side comes to the fore and may distract you from the fact that her co-workers have yet to emerge from the bland background.

The plots vary in quality: A future story involving a dead nanny is a little better than tonight’s opener; another involving a body in a rug is a little worse.

None of the episodes is likely to keep you up at night puzzling out the intricacies of the mystery, but they won’t bore you or insult your intelligence. Castle exists to exploNit the appeal of its stars and the amusing byplay between their characters, and it does that with admirable efficiency.

Full Review: www.usatoday.com/life/television

At first glance, this new ABC series — which premieres Monday at 9 p.m. — seems like a police drama, filled with all the requisite murder and mayhem and investigative mumbo-jumbo leading to an episode-ending, climactic application of the cuffs.

But a closer look reveals that, at its heart, Castle is a romantic comedy in the grand tradition of Moonlighting and Remington Steele and Pushing Daisies and, as such, its success depends wholly on viewers’ willingness to fall in love with its sparring/flirting romantic leads…

…From their first moments together, sparks fly — naturally, the first ones are prompted by annoyance rather than amorous intent, since Castle’s something of a cad and Beckett’s got something buried in her past that makes her believe that most, if not all, men are pigs…

…by the first episode’s end, the show’s producers have concocted a wildly illogical premise that will allow Castle and Beckett to coexist uncomfortably well into the foreseeable future.

If, that is, viewers buy into the romantic tension and make a viewing commitment that generates renewal-worthy ratings. The betting here is that they will — or, at least, they should — because Fillion and Katic generate some legitimate small-screen heat, and it might be fun to stick around to see how far it goes, and how long its writers can keep it from going too far (remember David and Maddie’s ill-considered mambo?).

The cases in the first two episodes previewed are interesting, and the supporting cast is able. But the Castle-Beckett coupling is the only thing that really matters, and it works.

Full Review at www.winnipegfreepress.com

Judging by the timeslot it’s given Castle — it premieres at 10 p.m. ET Monday, March 9, after the network’s top-rated show, Dancing with the Stars — ABC seems to think it’s found the show to break that drought. And while the first two episodes have some good moments — thanks in large part to Firefly and Waitress star Nathan Fillion in the title role — the show doesn’t immediately announce itself as a hit….

…The responsibility for making the show go, then, falls mostly to Fillion, and he does an admirable job of it. The extent to which Castle works is due mostly to Fillion’s charm and Rick’s attempts to crack through Kate’s tough facade. Fillion and Katic play off one another reasonably well, but Kate is at the moment a little underwritten. Indications that she’s a fan of Castle’s work are brought up early in the pilot and then basically dropped, and while she’s good with a dismissive line, it would be nice to see Katic get a little more room to work.

It might also be nice to see Rick get roughened up a little. Though he’s presented as something of a bad boy, the character is almost too nice, raising a stable teenage daughter (Molly Quinn) and putting up with his ex-actress mom (Susan Sullivan, who could challenge 90210′s Jessica Walter to a boozy grandma-off) crashing at his house. Monday’s premiere has an amusing scene in which Rick plays poker with some fellow best-selling novelists (James Patterson and Stephen J. Cannell play themselves); more glimpses into Rick’s day job and professional life might be a good thing.

Full Review available at http://blog.zap2it.com

This new series is carried stylishly and confidently by Fillion in what may be the best role of his career to date after a fairly thankless stint as Dana Delany’s philandering husband on “Desperate Housewives.” In fact, Fillion was filming that other ABC series when the “Castle” executive producers scheduled a meeting with him.

“I never do this in a meeting, but I said, ‘Listen, I am so this guy. This is me. I can do this forwards, backwards and blindfolded. This is what I love to do,’ ” Fillion recalls. “The script just spoke to me. Here’s a guy who is having fun every day, having adventures, getting away with something. That’s what I want my life to be like. In my real life, I sit around a living room and talk to people, so in my work life, I’d like it to be an adventure like Rick Castle.”

It certainly wasn’t a stretch to capture Rick’s reluctance to grow up, adds Fillion, 37, who admits that his own inner child is still pretty rambunctious.

“When I was a kid we weren’t spoiled with a lot of toys,” he says. “We have a family joke that when we were kids, we had two toys: Legos and a stick. My parents expected us to use our imagination. Now I’m older and have more disposable income, so I look on the Internet and see an electric skateboard that will carry a guy my size 14 miles an hour, and I’m buying that thing. That’s what I use to go down the corner to get groceries.”

The show gets additional zing from “Dharma & Greg” veteran Susan Sullivan, romping through her scenes as Rick’s madcap actress mom, Martha Rodgers.

“Susan kind of blows in and out of episodes,” Fillion says. “She comes in like a hurricane, does her bit and mixes things up and then blows out again. What is so great about her scenes is that Susan is an actress who just truly understands comedy. Her comedic instincts are phenomenal, so you really get the impression that Martha Rodgers has a life before she arrives into the scene and she has one after she blows out of it. You just get the very real sense that she’s part of a real world that we’re just getting little tastes of.

“One of the things I love most is you get the distinct idea that Castle has a mother who is not very maternal, and yet he has a daughter who is. Rick mothers his mother and is mothered by his daughter.”

Yet at the core of “Castle” is the prickly relationship between Rick and Kate, and series creator Andrew Marlowe insists that he and fellow executive producer Rob Bowman are in no rush to turn up the romantic heat between these two characters.

“(Rick) is looking for a new main character … and (Kate) becomes his muse, the new character for his next best-selling set of novels, so he pulls some strings to allow himself to become her unofficial partner on cases,” Marlowe says. “Castle approaches the investigation from the point of view of ‘What is the story?’ So he brings in a storytelling point of view, whereas Beckett, who is a good cop, is all about the evidence. You have the two of them investigating the crime from different points of view, and their styles and their personalities clash, and that’s where the sparks fly.”

“I think what you’re really asking is: ‘Are they going to blow it early?’ ” Fillion says. “No, I don’t think they’re going to do that. I think you’re going to be very happy and very comfortable with the pace at which they do things. I think we all learned a valuable lesson from ‘Moonlighting,’ in that once (David and Maddie) got together, that show was over. Here, you have two people who are very attracted to each other and have a real interest in each other, but at the same time they are diametrically opposed (to each other) in a lot of different ways that are going to keep them separated.”

Full Review: www.thepost.ca

The opening act, which cross-cuts between Nathan Fillion’s character’s book release party (he is the titular Richard Castle) – he’s just written the final book of a bestselling detective character in which the main character is gruesomely killed – and a murder scene where a Female Cop recognizes the mode of murder. Castle’s publisher is his ex-wife, and he’s months overdue for turning in his next manuscript. Oh, and he invited his (alcoholic?) mother to live with him and his daughter now that he’s divorced or something. Castle’s mother, played by Susan Sullivan, pales in comparison to Jessica Walter’s Tabitha Wilson on 90210 (she remains the only standout on the spin-off… but she’s basically playing a toned down version of Lucille Bluth, so… moving on). And just as things are getting truly boring, Castle starts complaining about how truly boring he finds the release parties and how boring he found writing those detective books to be. Why? Because he already knew what every scene was going to be. So you’ll color no one surprised when Female Cop shows up at the book release party wanting to ask Castle some questions (because the murder was done in a way that was featured in one of his novels, natch…) Really wish there hadn’t been a lampshade hung on that. As usual, Fillion oozes a kind of dirty charm and chemistry with just about every extra and inanimate object. Which is why we love him and why we haven’t stopped watching yet.

I find Stana Katic rather bland in the Mariska Hargitay Female Cop role (I believe it’s Detective Beckett)… but she’s supposed to be straightwoman to Fillion’s Castle, who is something of a loose cannon / lothario (he stole a police horse… and was naked at the time… also during the release party he signs many guest’s decolletage) so she does a serviceable job. Oh, my, I wonder if the series is going to revolve around UST… b-t-dubs, I think Cupid’s UST between Cannavale and Paulson is better. In a semi-twist, it’s actually Castle who volunteers to assist with the investigation, as opposed to him being forced to by the police. Much to Beckett’s chagrin, of course. I do like the way Katic intonates “novelist” as an insult when speaking to Castle. And I do find myself thoroughly amused that the NYPD runs into real-world roadblocks such as the length of time it takes to get, like, fingerprints analyzed and Castle can just use his “I’m a famous, rich author” connects to speed things up… and then he gets a lecture from Beckett about cutting the line (other people are waiting for prints, you know).

There’s another copycat murder, a frame job, yadda yadda yadda, and the only thing I’m really curious about is how the series is going to be set up (since I have to assume that it’s not going to be yet more copycat murders each week… and I’m going to go out on a limb and assume that it’s Castle looking for his next bestseller).

Score one zinger for the daughter when she tells Castle that if she keeps having bail him out of jail, he’s going to have to raise her allowance.

It’s hard to see Fillion in a brown coat that isn’t Malcolm Reynolds’.

The UST banter between Castle and Beckett isn’t quite up to par with Booth and Bones, television’s current reigning bantery UST crimesolving duo. Although it’s not for Fillion’s lack of trying (nice use of entendre on the work “debrief”… XD)

And why are they going to film the series in Los Angeles, when it takes place in NYC and there’s all those awesome NY state / NYC tax credits to take advantage of?

For a script that I couldn’t even manage to get through 15 pages of… a rather enjoyable foundation from which a better series could rise. The series, by the way, is set up by the fact that Castle’s next series of novels will center around a tough but savvy female detective, but Castle needs to tag along to do research (and it’s kind of helped along because Castle is friends with the Mayor… so, blah blah, political pressure, swept under the rug, just get on with the series, peeps). I would definitely say that Castle is the first pilot I’ve seen thus far that has so vastly overdelivered on my expectations. Hell, I’m even willing to see if Katic can grow into the role (a role that is a tough one, as the straightwoman… and will on be aided when the series lets us know more about her character, as the pilot was pretty much all Castle all the time).

You know… I’m actually surprised ABC picked both Castle and Cupid up. Not from a quality perspective, mind you. But they’re both NYC-based (though only Cupid will be able to take full advantage of that as it’s going to be NYC-filmed) anthological series with a UST throughline between a larger-than-life leading man and a straightwoman. It’s just that one is a murder mystery each week and the other is a romantic comedy every week. ABC has done stranger things with scheduling, and of course it totally depends on the network’s needs come January or March… but I don’t think they’d be a terrible fit together (though perhaps it’d be too much of the same). For now, I say move Brothers & Sisters to the post-DWTS Results 10pm hour, put Castle after Desperate Housewives and put Cupid after Grey’s Anatomy (I haven’t seen the new Life on Mars yet… but my hopes aren’t high).

– Submitted by: Travis Yanan