ABC’s just over here, airing a Castle clone starring Rachel Bilson and Mr. LeAnn Rimes

Here’s what’s happening in world of television for Thursday, July 5. All times are Eastern.

Top pick

Take Two (ABC, 10 p.m.): In the spring of 2016, ABC did what hundreds of suspects couldn’t manage, and bumped off Castle, the procedural about the screwball, opposites-attract crime-solving duo of a cocky mystery novelist and a straight-shooting police detective. At the same time, the network was developing Take Two, a follow-up from the Castle team of Andrew W. Marlowe and Terri Edda Miller about… the screwball, opposites-attract crime-solving duo of cocky former TV detective Sam Swift (Rachel Bilson) and straight-shooting private dick Eddie Valetik (Eddie Cibrian). A couple years later, and Take Two has snuck into The Alphabet’s summer lineup. It’s no Moonlighting, and Swift and Valetik are hardly the new Castle and Beckett, but it is agreeably zippy viewing—and anything that has Rachel Bilson slinging quips on TV is A-OK by us. (Added bonus: Orphan Black’s Jordan Gavaris co-starring as a medical examiner and Sam Swift superfan who goes by the excellent name of Mick English.) In case you were worried the show might be taking itself too seriously, tonight’s episode finds Sam and Eddie on the trail of a missing DJ.

Wild card

Lethal Weapon/Lethal Weapon 2/Lethal Weapon 3/Lethal Weapon 4 (AMC, 4 p.m.): Elsewhere in mismatched gumshoes: AMC’s showing the entire Lethal Weapon series tonight—and if you’re not getting too old for this kind of shit, Rush Hour and Men In Black are also good-naturedly bickering in other corners of your cable package.

 
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