Will ‘Castle’ keep romance at bay?

LOS ANGELES — It doesn’t take a detective to figure out that when a TV show has a pair of mystery-solving partners, one a man and the other a woman, they’re eventually going to be doing more than sleuthing.

That was the case with Pierce Brosnan and Stephanie Zimbalist on “Remington Steele”; Bruce Willis and Cybill Shepherd on “Moonlighting”; and David Duchovny and Gillian Anderson on “The X-Files.”

Fans who wanted Seeley Booth (David Boreanaz) and Temperance Brennan (Emily Deschanel) to do some actual “under covers” work thought it had happened at the end of last season on “Bones,” only to discover it wasn’t real.

Television’s latest hot couple can be found on the ABC series “Castle.”

Stana Katic has heard the “Moonlighting” comparisons for the sexually charged, sniping relationship her character, Detective Kate Beckett, has with tagalong mystery writer Richard Castle (Nathan Fillion) on “Castle.” But she doesn’t quite buy that her partnership has the same sizzle as when Willis and Shepherd were getting horizontal for TV audiences.

“I don’t think ‘Moonlighting’ is a proper parallel, because Cybill’s character was a bit looser than Beckett is. I think the best comparison is to strong law enforcement women, strong warrior-princess women. And Nathan gets to run the gamut of all of the fine comedians out there,” Katic said during an interview on the set of the ABC series.

Getting to the romance may take time. Katic’s character is tough, devoted to her job and guarded. She’s also a little frustrated because she has to baby-sit the mystery writer who is using her as the basis for his next book. But the two do share the kind of onscreen sexual tension that suggests it isn’t a matter of whether they will get together, but when.

The task for Katic is to make Beckett tough, but not to the point that audiences won’t like her enough to root for the romance. She does that by portraying Beckett as obsessively determined when she is after a criminal, but more sensitive when dealing with the victims.

Only small pieces of Beckett’s life away from the job have been revealed since the show launched earlier this year as a midseason replacement. Katic likes that more information will be revealed during the second season, which starts at 9 p.m. Monday.

“I think when we finally delve into her personal life, there will be something very girlish about her,” Katic said.

And delving, when it comes to male-female mystery-solving partners, often means romance.

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