What makes TV dramas like The Ultimatum and Red Thread watchable? Andrew Marlowe would be the best person to ask.

He has after all written screenplays for movies like Air Force One, Hollow Man and End Of Days, and he’s also the creator and executive producer of the television series Castle, now in its third season.

And Marlowe is enjoying his work on the new season of the tongue-in-cheek detective show that follows the adventures of novelist Richard Castle, played by Nathan Fillion, and detective Kate Beckett (Stana Katic), as they partner up to solve murder mystery crimes.

“As our loyal viewers know, Richard Castle has published several books that are based upon his adventures with Detective Beckett, and one of them is being turned into a movie in Hollywood,” Marlowe explained about the third season’s proceedings.

“The actress who’s playing the character based on Detective Beckett comes to New York to shadow her. And so she’s following Beckett around; Castle’s following Beckett around; and the actress starts to look and act like Beckett. And of course Castle starts to fall for her a little bit, and Beckett gets a little creeped out that this woman is kind of taking over her life. So that’s a lot of fun.”

More than a little of the show’s brand of humour comes from Marlowe himself. “My wife likes to say that it’s hard not to fall in love with Richard Castle, because it’s my words coming out of Nathan Fillion’s mouth. He’s very, very cute,” he said with a smile. “Since I’m a writer, and Castle’s a writer, I think we have very specific points of view on a lot of things. And it’s been a lot of fun to give that a voice.”

The chemistry between the stars is a big contributor to the show’s popularity, too. “Nathan brings a lot of natural charm, and he’s the kind of person, like Castle, who can say something that’s just a little bit offensive, but get away with it. One of the great things about Stana as an actress is you get a sense that there’s a lot of depth there that she’s not showing. So … for Castle, (it) is really a process of discovering who this person is.”

What does it take to make a successful show? To answer this, Marlowe referenced two Singapore-produced shows. Red Thread, for example, which starred Adrian Pang as the blind Alex Sung who’s intent on finding out who killed his wife, had a bounty of “rich material” there.

“But my question is, what’s going to keep viewers coming back week after week after week on Alex’s journey with this one particular family? If the character’s interesting and compelling, I’d figure out a way to move him beyond the family to discover that his thoughts about Kong Wah being responsible for killing his wife may be wrong, and he has to search elsewhere. So he’s following the clues, but along the way he gets involved in other things, so it’s not just limited to that family and that soap opera.”

The Zoe Tay vehicle The Ultimatum relies on its execution. “If it’s written well and acted well, you could have an audience really enjoy this kind of melodrama,” said Marlowe. “Desperate Housewives is over the top, but it does very well. There’s always an audience for over-the-top material as long as you don’t go too far out there. It depends on how it’s handled and how it’s crafted.

“With a TV audience, you’re asking them to invite these people into your house, day after day, week after week,” he continued. “(So the audience has) to like the characters or be fascinated by them. Ultimately, at the end of the day, most basic stories have been around for thousands of years. And you’ve seen versions of this story a number of times. The thing that keeps us really invested is who these people really are, and whether we get caught up in their lives.”

A good starting point, explained Marlowe, should be the story.

“Where we start is to try and find a compelling story and a compelling crime. (Castle) works from conjecture. Beckett works from the evidence. She’s like, ‘That’s a great story, but the evidence says this’. He’s like, ‘Yeah, but that’s boring. Here’s a better story’. So they do meet in the middle. We want Beckett to be able to solve the things that she’s good at solving, and we want Castle to solve the things that he’s good at solving. Because we want the audience to feel that these two people are great together.”

Source: here