Monk is a fun and cleverly written show and if you've never seen it, you should really give it a try- it's on Amazon Prime.
In the last week or so, I've been rewatching episodes from the first few seasons of Monk, the comedy/drama/police procedural which ran from 2002-2009. It stars Tony Shalhoub as the title character Adrian Monk who is a former police officer who suffers from OCD. A brilliant detective, he was a successful officer despite his disorder until the day his beloved wife Trudy was killed by a car bomb. It becomes the one case that he can't solve, and the grief and trauma of her murder causes Monk to have a nervous breakdown. This exacerbates his OCD and phobias to the point where he can barely function and requires a nurse/assistant to pursue his new profession as a consultant to the police, since he can no longer be an active police officer. This doesn't sound funny- and it isn't always- but the show is consistently amusing. Tony Shalhoub is amazing as Monk, so funny yet so vulnerable, so frustrating yet so endearing. The rest of the cast is great as well: Ted Levine as Captain Stottlemeyer, Jason Grey-Stanford as Lieutenant Randy Disher, and Stanley Kamel as Monk's psychiatrist Dr. Kroger. Monk's first assistant is Sharona Fleming, played by Bitty Schram from season one to midway through season three. She was replaced by Natalie Teeger (Traylor Howard) at that point, who was his assistant until the show ended after season 8. Sharona is a great character so I was dismayed when she was replaced, but Natalie grows on you though she's a completely different personality. That's actually a good thing, because Sharona's character was so distinctive that Natalie wouldn't work if she was just a pale imitation of what had gone before. Monk is a fun and cleverly written show and if you've never seen it, you should really give it a try- it's on Amazon Prime.
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