When not plundering the literary canon for potential screen gold, screenwriters are often concerned with rendering the author’s lot on screen. Three broad myths typically result: the tortured, tragic artist with furrowed brow and repetitive strain injury of the fingers (or wrists, an occupational hazard of all that navel-gazing), the bitter, suicidal drunk, or writer-as-rebel-cum-rock-star, perpetuated by anything vaguely related to Hunter S. Thompson or Jack Kerouac. So too US crime romp Castle.

All of the above inflate the sizable bubble of writerly vanity; heaven forbid readers, you poor, mediocre plebs not gifted by the muses, should run away with the idea that writers of those airport paperbacks and indeed, the literary titans of this world are much like you.

TV-land frequently indulges in this sort of wish fulfilment; recasting it’s often overlooked and beleaguered creatives as youthful, glamorous and dynamic.  True to form, Nathan Fillion (Firefly, Waitress, Desperate Housewives) acquits himself well as the titular Richard Castle. After all, this is a man who makes a flinty space-age outlaw named Malcom sexy. 

Fillion slides archly through the pilot on a slime of dubious hell-raiser charm and blue-eyed handsomeness as the titular crime novelist, who finds himself caught up in a real murder investigation. But, before we get to the gore, the series takes a moment to establish the difficulties of being a best-selling author. Not least of which is chronic boredom, what with the endless hobnobbing with the great and the good at glitzy parties, and having to bat away palpitating young murder groupies.

The resultant unsavoury train of thought on Dan Brown et al and their nocturnal habits requires me to conjure the, ahem, arresting image of Castle’s procession through the streets of New York on a liberated police horse a la Lady Godiva, one of many debauched stories alluded to.  It also begs the question, how on earth do these people find time to actually write?

Castle begins the series failing to tackle this particular problem, having killed off a beloved character, in denial and in search of inspiration. He finds it in the shape of a comely, if gruff police detective, investigating a series of copycat killings. Cut from the same maverick cloth as many a modern TV crime fighter, but with one important difference: Richard Castle is all shiny surface, with nary a smudge of the soul to be found. Instead, Castle flirts with the gamine Detective Beckett (Stana Katic, Quantum of Solace, Heroes) and has himself a grand adventure.

She looks doe-eyed and delicate, but underestimate her at your peril. Beckett’s one of the boys, kicking down doors and taking down perps. There’s a decided whiff of Significant Backstory, about her too, during one of Castle’s many smooth, showboating sequences. As ‘smart, attractive women become lawyers’ not cops, Castle aims his sub-Holmesian slings and arrows at Beckett when the come-hither looks fail. Even if he can’t grasp the chasm between reality and fiction at crime scenes, when it comes to Kate Beckett, Castle hits home almost at once. 

Ah, another one of my favourite cop clichés, in which the damaged woman in a man’s world covers her pain with a tough exterior. Helen Mirren as Jane Tennison remains the best example; she made the archetype smart, complex, if frequently unlikeable – no such luck here. The implication is that Beckett’s a mere kill-joy who needs a  man-child with a no-means-yes approach to gender politics to shake her up a little. One finds more facets to the principal characters in an advert for cleaning products.

That said, Castle refuses to take itself seriously. Instead, leading the viewer by the nose toward a dramatic emotional connection before the punch line, giving said nose a gleeful ‘gotcha’ tweak. Like the majority of scenes in which Castle appears with his vastly more sensible teenage daughter and showbiz mother. If you smell another cliché here, you’d be right – his daughter is wise beyond her years, her sole function being to roll her eyes at the grown-ups’ childish antics, and to prompt one of those squinty, staring-into-the-middle distance eureka moments.

Castle aims some neat jabs at the commercial end of the publishing industry and the nuts-and-bolts formula approach favoured by certain thriller writers; I greatly enjoyed the hideously awkward cameos from real-life authors like James Patterson, and TV screenplay veteran Stephen J. Cannell (currently re-booting the A-Team for the summer). Name-checking aside, we know they’re writers because they say writerly things like ‘self-aggrandising’. But, in essentials, a zippy chimera of Murder, She Wrote, CSI: NY and Moonlighting, with fun dialogue, set in a gleaming tourist-board New York never darkened by rainclouds. Now that The Mentalist’s writers have given their characters a welcome, bloody kick in the teeth, Castle is enjoyable enough to paper over its familiarity.

Meet Alison Dubois (Patricia Arquette, True Romance, Ed Wood), Phoenix law student, wife, mother and psychic.

A real Alison exists, as Medium’s opening titles insist, but she doesn’t begin as a crusader for justice, or if she does, it’s in a firmly earthbound manner, as a legal intern and general dogsbody for the District Attorney (Miguel Sandoval). The opening titles also undo some of the quiet, unflashy tone of the pilot, and the emphasis on Alison’s normality, with their sub X-Files music and kaleidoscopic primary colours that swirl into Rorschach ink blots, a crude effort to marry scientific study and new-agey stuff on auras and such, which does Medium no favours.

Alcohol dulls the voices of the dead but won’t quieten them; in a playful sequence, Alison sees the ghost of her father in law, who wonders what her husband sees in her. He’s an engineer and a rationalist, believes that Alison’s dreams are a reaction to stress, and as an experiment of sorts, he sends transcripts of Alison’s dreams to local law enforcement.

The show really begins when it turns out the dreams resemble actual crimes, in a way that piques the interest, and suspicion of investigators like the laconic Captain Push (an understated Arliss Howard), who becomes an ally. It’s a nifty set up, which establishes Alison and the central premise immediately.

Whether Alison is real, whether she really does possess psychic powers is irrelevant. Medium works because it maintains just the right amount of intrigue and scepticism, by making her visions oblique and imprecise. There needs to be a certain amount of interpretation, which opens Alison and her methods up to scrutiny.  

Also engaging is the contrast between the warm, chaotic domesticity of home life with her daughters, and the grim details of her work – I took an instant shine to Joe (Jake Weber), Alison’s dry, long-suffering husband, and Medium’s voice of calm common sense. He accepts her, even if he doesn’t quite accept her abilities. Here’s hoping that by keeping him supportive and in the background, he doesn’t remain a saintly spouse, as Weber manages to invest him with a personality, but needs a chance to flex some dramatic muscle.

Medium isn’t above the odd daft or unrealistically neat storyline, and a formula emerges very quickly. Allison senses something related to a crime, her husband responds with reassurance or a quip, she must contend with the disbelief and outright hostility of law enforcement, it comes good in the end and the bad guys are caught.

But Arquette makes Alison believable and sympathetic, her relationships feel real. She’s not a maverick, a genius, an expert or even a cop. She’s often as baffled by her visions as everyone else, and experiences self doubt¸ unlike unrepentant fraudster Patrick Jane of The Mentalist, a onetime psychic who also consults for the law. Also unlike any TV psychics you could name, who trade on claiming certainty. Alison’s leap into the belief her dreams are a force for good feels too pat, even a touch narcissistic, but Medium is not quite as fantastic, nor as glossy as the likes of Supernatural and Ghost Whisperer, Alison speaks, looks and dresses like someone you might know. Arquette’s imperfect prettiness and scream-queen wide eyes mean she can register the disgust, shock and fear of the layman in doing what she does.

The source of Alison’s ability is never satisfactorily explained, it’s as misty and shrouded as her visions, which vary in their point of view; murderer, victim, observer. I can’t help but feel a nagging irritation with this, and with Medium’s brand of instant, magic-wand TV policing; it diminishes the painstaking, puzzle-solving element and psychological insight of good crime fiction that appeals to nerds like me.

But, Medium makes a valid point about the importance of doubt.  While hysterical religious folk will maintain, in tiresome fashion, that the inability of science to explain everything invalidates it, and vice versa, Medium makes the sly suggestion that there’s room for spirituality, science, hokum and everything in between.

Despite the distinct lack of coalfaces, it’s a tough life being TV-land’s Mr. Handsome.

There comes a point when it leaves the burdened actor with two possible routes. The Patrick Dempsey – as demonstrated by L’Oreal’s current barnet-for-hire and likely eternal bland romantic hero until the moisturiser stops working and botox beckons. Or, The George Clooney Model – for the bachelor-about-town with impeccable comic timing, an ear for a story and an eye to his long-term prospects.

The above examples do make me wonder if heir apparent to the throne, the fragrant, tousle-haired Simon Baker (The Mentalist, The Guardian), quite knows the mire he’s getting into. I like to think that he does, based, somewhat spuriously, on the knowing twinkle in his best performances that straddles the very thin line between endearing and smug. At present, since society hates pretty, situational-blond men who can kick a ball/dance/sing/act a bit, he’s little choice but to make frequent use of that oft-remarked-upon smile.

But, would The Mentalist work without Simon Baker’s charm and perfect dentition?

After all, it follows a tried-and-tested formula, which consists of making the viewer feel gratifyingly clever by allowing us to play along Cluedo-style with a flawed, magnetic genius like Patrick Jane (see every screen incarnation of Sherlock Holmes, House, Eleventh Hour). It gives us comedy value by providing an upstanding, blinkered, if well-intentioned boss for our hero to be at constant loggerheads with (the youthful Robin Tunney), before she becomes a believer. Then there’s the variably lunk-headed team of mere mortals comprising the obligatory pretty, idealistic one (Amanda Righetti), the brawny, hotheaded one (Owain Yeoman), and the stony-faced, occasionally sanctimonious one (Tim Kang) . Just in case anyone expects fully rounded peripheral characters, the purpose of the team is to dispense with the legwork, Patrick Jane being gleefully skittish when fists or bullets start flying, and to look suitably impressed/disgruntled when our hero plucks the solution to the mystery out of the ether.

They’re so often put out with good reason, since the implication is that this set of California’s finest can’t solve the simplest of crimes without outside help. In this instance, a fraudulent psychic and adept cold-reader that now spends his time debunking myths and consulting for law enforcement following a family tragedy. Because watching quiet, competent well-adjusted professionals going about their business doesn’t make good drama – the closest we get is The Bill, or the reliably dour A Touch of Frost. In fact, The Mentalist is less CSI and more Midsomer Murders, given the jocular tone and minimal gore.

Nothing wrong with keeping the blood off-camera: part of the enduring appeal of a murder mystery, regardless of format, is its stripping of a horrific, complex act down to a reassuringly neat puzzle to solve over a cup of tea. The Mentalist, with its sunshine, silly title (I did have brief visions of a mustached and sideburned Victorian entertainer who solves crimes – alas, no dice) and blunt edges, nears the apex of that idea, surmounted only by the cartoon buffoonery of Psych and the ever-comforting Murder, She Wrote.

The Mentalist tweaks the maverick formula just a little by having Baker’s character insist that he’s just a touchy-feely Ordinary Joe with a knack for ‘paying attention’, and keeps the grudging mutual admiration between him and his lovely boss to a tiny, teasing frisson restricted to some crackling exchanges that seem to consist of Patrick Jane wrongfooting her with his…twinkling. With luck, there’s time for a quick role reversal in a twenty-odd episode run.

  There’s little of the protagonists’ personal lives and almost no workplace fraternisation, which would be refreshing if the mysteries were a little more memorable. Unlike House, The Mentalist’s hero appears puckish, if not completely benign, nothing like the ugly, twisted psyches currently in vogue for cop shows, except for the intriguing titbits of a longer story arc.

I’m not certain the show wouldn’t hang together without Baker, but a lesser actor might struggle making Jane remotely watchable, given his propensity for flirtatiousness and inappropriate, teeth-grinding flippancy as a substitute for gallows humour (betting on seducing the grieving widow at a funeral – really?), and his uncanny success rate. I gave a little cheer during a recent episode, when a frazzled suspect landed a long overdue, crunchingly literal blow for mediocre folk  everywhere, exasperated by Jane’s cheery, Teflon-coated I-know-something-you-don’t air. I’m only human, after all.

Aside from the strange urge I get to bookend any mention of Simon Baker with ‘…who you may remember from such forgettable films/police procedurals/earnest lawyerly goodness as…’, I find myself hoping he can turn the inane magazine polls, chat show appearances and the inevitable speculation on his sexual proclivities to his advantage and do something surprising.

 I worry about my brain.

I feel the slow atrophy beginning. Unfounded, perhaps? Consider my unaccountable new taste for the anodyne, blue-eyed, skinny-boy bedroom funk of Maroon 5. Not even the breathy, gob-rotting ballads, rather the seedy, dry-mouthed morning after stuff, the nastiness veneered by efficiently catchy tunes. If that’s not enough, I love The Mentalist. I have a freakish, prematurely middle-aged crush on this man. It’s the accent, the passion for architecture, I swear. Nothing at all to do with the sledgehammer.

Unsurprising, perhaps, given my history of loving that which I really, really shouldn’t; hence my tenacious teen-movie habit, even more tenacious bad-dance-movie habit, my unreconstructed groin-aching adoration for Gene Hunt that defies analysis, for the angsty soundscapes of Keane when I can’t get behind Radiohead and find myself completely indifferent to Coldplay. As a pre-teen Trekkie, I feel my validation arriving. So, where does this place my devoted watching of the superlative Mad Men? Is this the one I can finally confess to without shame?

Tucked away on one of the BBC’s niche channels, and watched by a tiny handful of Ordinary Viewers, flanked by innumerable breathless critics, this one’s frustratingly difficult to dissect at work the next day, not least because all of your unimaginative mates watch Gossip Girl, Prison Break and, God-help-us Britain’s Got Talent.

It is with profound gratitude I’ve never grasped the appeal of Simon Cowell. Resolved in my loathing for Piers Morgan, so much the round-faced, braying, creatively impoverished void he should become a member of parliament, and the maudlin squawking of the token girl, I instead gravitate weekly toward the impeccably turned out urban crises of 1960s era ad-men.

At first glance, a jewel-like period curiosity from the makers of The Sopranos, which delicately unwraps another set of fragile male egos, I could rhapsodise on Mad Men’s subtle writing, the attention to detail, the terrifyingly coiffed wives and mistresses for whom style is armour, ammunition, and camouflage. That thinly veiled nastiness I like so much? Mad Men has it in spades, plus another of my favourite movie-land clichés, the misery and desperation behind the white picket fences of suburbia.

Rather than have someone find an ear in the middle of a manicured lawn, Mad Men makes the point with a thousand tiny moments of breathtaking cruelty, callousness, and simmering resentment. While the standout has to be Jon Hamm as the constricted, complex Lothario and war veteran Don Draper, every performance is pitch-perfect, from the thrusting, gimlet-eyed Pete Campbell (Vincent Kartheiser), a snotty upstart who combines Brylcreemed boyishness with a ruthless, manipulative streak, to The West Wing’s Elisabeth Moss, and her compelling turn as Peggy. She grows from a diligent, painfully naïve addition to the typing pool, new to the big city, to Don’s right hand who might become as brilliant, and as stunted.

Even the least interesting character at the beginning of the first season, Don’s unhappy spouse, and Grace Kelly doppelganger Betty (January Jones) begins to show signs of growing into something more than a neurotic housewife at the end of Season Two.

With nary a shouting match or explosion in sight, Mad Men is frequently a bruising watch, unafraid to tackle the less palatable mores of the time. Witness the casual racism and sexism, the frantic smoking and drinking, without a single anachronistic nod to modern sensibilities. It’s the delicious, black-hearted flipside to the lacquered, pastel tinted 60s output of Doris Day et al, in which Manhattanites circle one another in an endless cycle of comic misunderstanding despite claiming glamorous jobs like interior designer and journalist, and makes the triumph and tragedy of Peggy even more riveting.

Better than all of that is the total lack of those dismal tics blighting popular US drama of late: the awful, faux-portentous, moralising voiceovers (yes, Heroes, Desperate Housewives, Sex and the City I’m looking at you). Oh, the bloated, epic series spans that result in frustrating, shark-jumping plots, the insistence on foisting Unresolved Sexual Tension on unsuspecting characters and long-suffering viewers, the use of plangent, intrusive incidental music to bludgeon the audience over the head in readiness for a Significant Emotional Moment, when the writing or acting aren’t quite up to the mark, as per Grey’s Anatomy!

In short, find it. Watch it. Listen to no one who tells you a series set among the beautiful, rich and unprincipled has no resonance for today. Mad Men is as much about the impulse for something truthful in people who aren’t sure how to recognise it, expressed in the yearning of at least one of Stirling Cooper’s minions to create something permanent. Do it before Mad Men gets the axe in favour of Lost, or Smallville.

Now, if you’ll excuse me, I’ve an urgent appointment with something set in a high school, perhaps starring Alicia Silverstone, or Zac Efron. Maybe even John Cusack. I’ll be back when I’ve relocated my higher functions.