For the first time in a long time I am excited about a new television drama: Castle.

For the last few years, my wife and I have only watched Grey's Anatomy regularly. Not anymore. After only a few episodes of Castle, I'm hooked.

I saw the previews and thought it might be interesting, so I set up to record it. It had slipped my mind, and I didn't watch any of the recordings for three weeks. I sat down one Saturday and watched all three episodes straight through. I loved it.

It is the most smartly written cop/legal drama since the original Law and Order series. I watched The Practice and Boston Legal for a while, but my interest in both faded quickly. And I'm not a fan of cop dramas generally, but the prospect of a writer following around a detective for story material was too much for me to pass up.

Admittedly, the plots are somewhat predictable and formulaic, but the dialog surrounding them makes the show extremely watchable.

The underlying story lines are starting to develop: female becomes cop because of family tragedy, dislike between cop and ride-along writer develops into romantic tension, yada, yada, yada...you get the idea. But don't watch the show for the stories (which are well above average), watch for the wit. You will be glad you did.

If you've missed the first few episodes, you can watch them for free here: Castle (free episodes).