One of my favorite television shows is Monk. It's a police procedural starring Tony Shalhoub which ran for 8 seasons... and won as many Emmy Awards. After the death of his wife, Adrian Monk had a nervous breakdown which caused all of his many phobias and his OCD to escalate to debilitating levels. Unable to serve as a police detective, he had to quit the police force and become a private detective. Brilliant to near super-human levels, Monk solves murders that nobody else can. Alas, his many quirks makes it difficult to assimilate with people and function in society, so he has to be aided with a nurse who accompanies him on his cases.
Surprisingly, the show never lost steam and was pretty great right up until its final episode...
I'm just going to get this out of the way right now... I find it inconceivable that the show hasn't been brought back as a mini series or a some movie specials or even a full-on revival. The closest we got were a few book spin-offs and this cool promo spot from Peacock...
How is it that people could watch that and not go... Holy crap! We should bring back Monk!
Over the course of its 125 episodes, Monk had precious few supporting characters which were along for the entire ride. Two, as a matter of fact. Police Captain Leland Stottlemeyer (played by Ted Levine... yes, Buffalo Bill from The Silence of the Lambs) and Lieutenant Disher. Even the nurse assistant was two different characters (Bitty Scram was replaced after 40 episodes with Traylor Howard... both of whom were excellent). Not even Monk's psychiatrist lasted the entire show due to the untimely death of actor Stanley Kamel.
I had been watching a couple episodes (most) every night for months now. Last night I watched the season finale and am done.
I gotta tell you... it is really tough to not start all over again from episode one right now. How many shows can you say that about? Not many. Off the top of my head, it's something like this for me...
Given the huge, huge number of TV shows I've watched over the years, the fact that I can only think of 25 of them speaks volumes.
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We used to watch Friends a lot and that was replaced with The Office, s1-5 only. But for the last few years, it’s been only Parks and Rex, Schitt’s Creek, and Ted Lasso. There are actually four shows on your list I’ve never even heard of before. Weird.
I recently watched Monk for the first time and it was awesome. Considering Psych now has 3 movies how has Monk not even got one? Also we seem to have similar tastes in series so you have given me so great suggestions for binge watching!