Perhaps the biggest crime on Castle is identity theft.

While watching Edmonton’s Nathan Fillion in the debut episode of Castle, which airs tomorrow night on A and ABC, we couldn’t help but feel as if we’d seen this somewhere before.

Fillion plays Richard Castle, a horny, wise-cracking writer. He has a daughter, but the mother of his daughter has become a thorn in his side.

Suddenly, it struck us:

David Duchovny as Hank Moody in Californication!

Through a series of murders that appear to be based on his books, Richard Castle winds up getting involved in some police work with an attractive New York detective named Kate Beckett. She is played by yet another Canadian, Toronto-area actor Stana Katic.

Granted, Hank Moody hasn’t gone down the police path. But as the half-hostile, half-sexually tense relationship between Castle and Beckett develops, it brings to mind yet another current series: Bones, with Emily Deschanel and David Boreanaz.

And you know, there’s actually some Mulder and Scully from The X Files tossed into the Castle-Beckett tete-a-tete, too.

So here’s our proposal for a more appropriate title for Castle: The Bonesifornication Files.

No matter want you want to call it, Fillion — who last season was seen playing Dr. Adam Mayfair, the husband of Katherine Mayfair (Dana Delany), on Desperate Housewives — is just happy to be the main character on Castle.

“I spent some time on Desperate Housewives, lovely, lovely group, I made a lot of friends, they were very kind to me,” said Fillion, diplomatically. “But I spent a lot of time sitting around in a living room saying ‘Uh-huh. Yes. That’s right. Well, I’ll back you up on that.’

“That’s a show called Desperate Housewives and it’s about the housewives. Nobody’s complaining over there. But I decided in my next job, I wanted to have fun every day. I’m an actor. I have that wonderful job where every day can be an adventure for me. That’s what Castle is. Every day of his life is a field trip. He’s a child inside.”

Katic has her own views on the psychological dance between Castle and Beckett, which was described as “fiction meets friction” in ABC’s promotional material.

“The usual stereotype for a female police officer actually is a strong, hard, by-the-book kind of character,” Katic said. “But you’ll see (Beckett and Castle) develop a different kind of relationship.

“Originally, Det. Beckett is annoyed that she’s, in a way, babysitting this superstar who she obviously admires because she reads his books. But also he’s an anomaly in her crime-solving process.

“As the series goes on, the two of them gain real respect for each other’s qualities and for the ways they can help each other solve a case. They take turns benefiting from each other and bringing the lightness and the comedy, and bringing the intelligence and the heart.

“In the end, that’s kind of the thrust of the whole piece, isn’t it?”

Sounds like The Bonesifornication Files to us.

bill.harris@sunmedia.ca