Monk

2002

Seasons & Episodes

  • 8
  • 7
  • 6
  • 5
  • 4
  • 3
  • 2
  • 1
  • 0
8.1| 0h30m| TV-14| en| More Info
Released: 12 July 2002 Ended
Producted By: Touchstone Television
Country: United States of America
Budget: 0
Revenue: 0
Official Website: http://www.usanetwork.com/series/monk
Synopsis

Adrian Monk was once a rising star with the San Francisco Police Department, legendary for using unconventional means to solve the department's most baffling cases. But after the tragic (and still unsolved) murder of his wife Trudy, he developed an extreme case of obsessive-compulsive disorder. Now working as a private consultant, Monk continues to investigate cases in the most unconventional ways.

... View More
Stream Online

Stream with Prime Video

Director

Producted By

Touchstone Television

AD
AD

Watch Free for 30 Days

All Prime Video Movies and TV Shows. Cancel anytime. Watch Now

Trailers & Images

Reviews

AniInterview Sorry, this movie sucks
Cleveronix A different way of telling a story
Arianna Moses Let me be very fair here, this is not the best movie in my opinion. But, this movie is fun, it has purpose and is very enjoyable to watch.
Darin One of the film's great tricks is that, for a time, you think it will go down a rabbit hole of unrealistic glorification.
leonritzert Huge leaps of logic, none sense plots and just a terribly constructed show. If you can turn off your brain it might be enjoyable, if not not so much. It isnt funny enough to be only a comedy show. After ep. 5 season1 it was enough. The actions of the characters dont make any sense what so ever. None. People ask themselves how monk solves these cases? Plot constrcution. It has no authenticity. Same goes for the episodes before that. Maybe i am taking this show too serious, but tbh as i said earlier it isnt funny enough to be only a comedy show.
Robert D. Ruplenas I have fallen in love with this show by way of the cable reruns. It's wonderful in every way. The concept of the show is brilliant; a detective show in which the detective, although brilliant, is neither suave, brave, not debonair. He is truly a psychologically damaged person. And although his foibles and phobias are often played for laughs, the fact of his being destroyed by his wife's death is always a serious element of the show. The supporting players are excellent, particularly Ted Levine as Cpt. Stottlemeyer. The character of Randy is a bit gratuitously annoying but you can't have everything. The scriptwriting is some of the best around, with many subtle witticisms and some great cultural parody. And it is never straight out comedy; the tragic nature of Monk's mental affliction is always present, and the endings always have a gentle touch. The crime mysteries themselves are most often not the point of the show. They are merely the McGuffin - in Hitchcocks's phrase - on which to hang a drama about character relationships. Just a great, great show.
gofastergetrounder Monk was a wonderful concept. It works nearly perfectly for TV. I tend to like Mini-Series that develop and need to be watched in order from beginning to end. Monk isn't that kind of show. Instead, once you have the basic idea, you can watch and thoroughly enjoy any of the shows independently. The concept was strong enough, the writing good enough, and the acting skilled enough that the show managed to stay fresh essentially throughout the series. Sure, some ups and downs, but uniformly strong. That is really tough to do: Even the best TV shows have trouble staying fresh.I'd put it up with Arrested Development in terms of the amount it made me genuinely laugh. High praise indeed.
grizzledgeezer ion * runs large blocks of "Monk" on Saturday, and I've watched more episodes than I care to admit. I've long had doubts about the "quality" of the program, and yesterday's transition from the end of the series to the beginning provided a chance to get a better idea of what was good and bad about it.At its most-basic, "Monk" is yet another attempt to clone "Sherlock Holmes". Adrian Monk has Holmes-like powers of deduction, which make the police look less-than-competent. Even the intelligent and level-headed Leland Stottlemeyer is too quick to accept the obvious. Yet Monk's seemingly amazing skills -- which are supposed to the result of his OCD -- are actually based on nothing more than careful observation and thoughtful analysis, something any bright person is capable of.To put it a bit differently... the conceit that Monk's detective skills are largely a result of his OCD is absurd. Sherlock Holmes never credited his skills to cocaine, but rather that he used his native intelligence well. He summed up his technique in his remark to Watson: "You look but you do not see."If there's any doubt about the Holmes connection, note that (at least in the early episodes), Monk mimics Holmes by drawing conclusions from tiny bits of evidence (such as noting that Stottlemeyer isn't getting along well with his wife). There's also the fact that when Dr Kroger dies, his replacement is a Dr Bell -- Sherlock Holmes was modeled after Dr Joseph Bell.Monk's implausibly unique genius is a strike against the series, though not necessarily a fatal one. Almost as bad is the insufferably stupid Randy Disher. It's impossible to believe he's a lieutenant, indeed, that he could have earned //any// position on the police force. He makes Chester Goode look like Niels Bohr. He is perhaps supposed to represent Nigel Bruce's Dr-Watson-as-bumbling-idiot character.Another problem is that Monk in invariably involved with murders, almost always committed by more-or-less intelligent people with strong motives (money, revenge, etc). In real life, such murders are uncommon; the number which occur in San Francisco in two seasons is less than the number in the entire country in a decade. In fairness, this focus on murder has long been a problem with most crime series; "The Rockford Files" stands out as one exception.Of course, "Monk" is supposed to be clever entertainment, not something to make us think. So none of these problems justifies an a-priori condemnation.Few TV series maintain a consistently high level of quality (it's easy to be bad all the time), and "Monk" is no exception. The pilot movie and the earliest episodes show a somewhat different "take" on the characters than the bulk of the episodes.There's the obvious friction between Stottlemeyer and Monk. Leland rightly feels that respect for the police might not survive a loose cannon who desperately longs to be reinstated. This friction naturally erodes as Monk shows he's almost always right.The most-significant changes involve Monk. He's initially far more sober (due mostly to unresolved grief over his wife's death) -- and self-assured -- than he will be later. His OCD -- the raison d'etre for the series -- goes from being "only" an important part of his personality, to becoming virtually its whole definition, with a resulting imbalance in his behavior.Monk moves from being a moderately plausible serious character to a largely comic one, whom we are sometimes on the verge of laughing //at// -- or wanting to punch. It's difficult to understand why someone so intelligent makes so little progress in overcoming his phobias and OCD.The creators bit off more than they could chew, and I suspect they quickly gave up trying to make Adrian Monk a truly believable character. Perhaps he should have been portrayed as an actively irritating person tolerated only for his crime-solving skills (not unlike Sherlock Holmes). But viewers are unlikely to watch a TV series about an annoying person (remember "Buffalo Bill"?), so it was easy to fall back on "Monk as semi-lovable buffoon".What's remarkable is that Tony Shaloub survived this series unscathed, mostly because of his restraint in playing a character who could have looked even more ridiculous than he was. Shaloub is a much better actor than he had a chance to demonstrate here. Perhaps someday we will see him in a TV series worthy of his talents.So... "Monk" is not a bad series, and as time-wasters go, above average. But it's merely "good", and not at all what it might have been.* Its slogan is "positively entertaining". Apparently, they've never heard of negatively charged ions.

Similar Movies to Monk