Lockdown, Lowdown… Ringside Report Looks Back at the TV Show Castle

By Donald “Braveheart” Stewart

I love kooky. Not too kooky, mind you but just on the side of it being a little strange but not too bizarre.

So, when Andrew W Marlowe pitched the idea of a rich writer, who had a friend in the mayor of New York, who then gets the writer a job in law enforcement as a ride a long buddy, as he is a crime/thriller writer and good at solving things, aside from the writer’s block with which he is struggling, it was sheer kookiness. He must have worried about how to sell that pitch at some point when he went along to ABC to sell it, but he did, and we got Castle.

You then cranked up sexual tension by making the lead detective a beautiful young woman who was not immune to the flattery and the charm of the millionaire writer and you got the central tenet of 173 episodes over 8 seasons.

With Richard Castle played by Nathan Fillion, Kate Beckett played by Stana Katic, buddies in blue Esposito played by Jon Huertas and Kevin Ryan played by Seamus Dever, alongside medical examiner Dr. Lanie Parish, played by Tamala Jones you had the crime busting team. The romance which blossomed and ruined the show between Castle and Beckett had another team of his mother, Martha Rodgers, played by Susan Sullivan and his daughter, Alexis played by Molly Quinn, which meant you had a secondary venue enriched by excellent actors. They were able to anchor the relationship which gave us the feeling that this was an exceptional example of how to put together a TV show.

It is often said that the simplest of ideas has the most legs in terms of survival and after you had the premise there was not much left to develop this simplest of complexities. The central theme of fighting crime in each episode was clear though for the 8 seasons we had little narrative arches pop up between the characters which worked well, whilst the murder of Beckett’s mother became a noticeable plot line in which there was plenty of traction. It gave a sinister air to the whole thing and whilst the comedy played out with little jeopardy attached, this brought a whole new level of intrigue. We became hooked with the backdrop of the scenery of New York which is always a winner

Dialing down on the tempestuous nature of the central characters, Castle ditched his highly successful fictional character, Derrick Storm, to replace him with a her – Nikki Heat, his new character based upon… Beckett…

Castle had his own trials and tribulations with which to deal. There was his quirkiness, her staid professionalism, his inability to control his man-child tendencies, his mother’s need to be housed, his daughter’s need to be free and their overwhelming love within a family. It brought elements of the whole thing together in a homely manner. It maybe was not quite Little House on the Prairie fights crime, but it was not a million miles away.

That the two principal actors. Katic and Fillion had a strained, to say the least, relationship may have come as a shock. They were at one point rumored to be in couples counselling because of their frosty relationship at work – but their getting together as a couple and then marrying, was the ruination of the show. Once the spark of will they, wont they was gone, who cared?

By the end of season 8, the tension was burst, and it became a different sort of tension that ended the show. Season 9 was to begin without Beckett. Let go by the studio, Katic said her goodbyes and the TV show was ready to move on without her. Then the other actors became their own casualties and it all fell apart. The final show with a strange sequence inserted of a happy married life for both Castle and Beckett was unfulfilling and simply not the way the show ought to have finished. Seeing what looks like the principal character departure in The Blacklist where the female lead looks as though she has died in the arms of James Spader, the mysterious Raymond “Red” Reddington, is the way to handle such things. Had Katic been given that option, would we still have the show? Who knows?

Fillion has progressed with his trademark smirk and comic timing into being the oldest Rookie on the block whilst Katic has been showing her acting chops in more serious roles and doing so with great skill. Perhaps we should not be so disappointed after all a quirky idea got past the executives, gave us 8 great season and then ran out of steam. We benefited whilst it trundled along so thanks for the memories!

British television is a curious affair. Begun through the British Broadcasting Corporation (BBC) it is funded through the universal license fee. In essence, if you wanted to watch the television , you had to pay the license fee. The BBC got it all and is state run, albeit at arms-length. Then came along commercial television in the form of the Independent Television (ITV) in 1955. Designed to bring a bit of competition to the BBC, it was paid for through advertising but still free to air… well they didn’t add another license fee to it. By the time that I was born, 1965, there was BBC1, BBC2 and ITV. And that was it. It was still years before Bruce Springsteen would moan that there were 55 channels and nothing on but here in the UK, we kept this going until in 1982, we added a fourth channel and in 1997, a fifth. With sparkling imagination, they were called Channel Four and ehm Channel Five… In between came Sky and we understood what Springsteen meant. And so, my childhood and leading up to early adulthood we had three options… But the programms made were exceptionally good. And so, here is some critical nostalgia as the lockdown has brought a plethora of reruns, new formats and platforms and old classics trying to make their way back into our consciousness as broadcasters flood their schedules with classics… or are they classics at all? Let me take you through an armchair critics’ view of what we have to see, to find out… Welcome to the Lockdown Lowdown…

[si-contact-form form=’2′]