The two best shows on TV you aren’t watching

Every TV season there’s one or two shows that I gloom on to that never seem to quite make it. A couple of years ago, there was “Studio 60″ Before that, “Firefly”. This season isn’t too different. My current favorite is Castle. The premise is that a best selling crime novelist is shadowing a NYC detective for his next best seller. The kicker is that its a female detective. The show has several things going for it. The writing is witty, the play between Becket and Castle is perfect and the story lines are different then your usual crime dramas. One of the best was this weeks where a mother staged the abduction of her child so she could get the ransom and paint the father as a bad father when she took him to divorce court. Really kept me guessing till the end of the show.

This isn’t the first time Nathan Fillion has been on tv. He was in Joss Whedon’s ill fated cultfest Firefly as Mal, and a couple of other TV shows. His wit and charm are key to making the character of Richard Castle work and its hard to imagine another actor in the role. Playing Kate Becket is Stana Katic. She’s had minor roles in some major TV movies and shows, she’s also been in a couple of regular movies (Quantum of Solace). The way the two work together is magic and one reason this show should be back in the fall.

The other show you’re not watching is Fox’s Dollhouse. Dollhouse is a creation of Joss Whedon (firefly, buffy, angel) and stars Eliza Dushku. From the Dollhouse site:

ECHO (Dushku) is an “Active,” a member of a highly illegal and underground group of individuals who have had their personalities wiped clean so they can be imprinted with any number of new personas. Hired by the wealthy, powerful and connected, the Actives don’t just perform their hired roles, they wholly become — with mind, personality and physiology — whomever the client wants or needs them to be. Whether imprinted to be a lover, an assassin, a corporate negotiator or a best friend, the Actives know no other life than the specific engagements they are in at that time.

The show is very scifi and has the “actives” dealing with things from love to POS systems to spies and killers. Its a hard one to get in to if you’re not in to the whole scifi scene, but if you’re a fan of Firefly, buffy or any of Whedon’s other works its pretty easy to get drawn in. And besides, the idea of an organization that can provide you with a person “programmed” to do/act however you want is a nifty idea. Isn’t it?