Castle

If you watch the CBS show more for Baker's sunny smile than for the way he always seems to know when people are lying, ABC's Castle might be more your style.

Katic has the more thankless role, as the actress in this scenario inevitably does, but the necessary sparks fly when she and Fillion are on screen together swapping barbs, and hopefully as time goes on, she'll get more to do than play kindergarten teacher to Castle. How much you like the series will depend almost entirely on how you enjoy watching these two spar; for me, that was enough.

The series is primarily goofy formulaic fun, and so far, Katic is no Deschanel, but like its twin, the series uses that shockingly durable Remington Steele DNA--peacock dude, furrowed-brow femme--to build neat puzzles out of human suffering.

The pilot and second installment are fun but utterly implausible, and the chemistry between the leads is passable but mostly forced.

I know this is going to come as a shock, but when the scene is designed around Kate, the show sags. By contrast, when Rick strolls into the room, the show perks up.

Days after announcing the cancellation of the brilliant "Life on Mars," ABC premieres Castle, dumping an original concept, beautifully achieved, with genius casting, and picking up the most averagely entertaining series in a long time.

If ABC's new cop drama, Castle, can slightly tweak its title character, it could turn into a very nice little show. In Monday night's premiere episode, it's just not quite there.

The problem is that in the pilot and an early episode, the crimes are nowhere as compelling as the characters. For a show like "Castle" that dares to launch a more classic version into an already saturated and tarted-up market, the murders have to be as complicated and compelling as the push-me-pull-you glances between the main characters, and so far, they just aren't.

This sort of banter takes up a good portion of the Castle premiere episode, each instance of it reinforcing the always-already familiar premise.

It's going for a screwball comedy/mystery mash-up, but Castle is just an implausible muddle.

I'd like to fall for Castle, but ultimately there's not that much there to love.