"If a good detective series depends on the strength of its central character, then Monk should be more popular than Morse by the end of the year. An obsessive-compulsive widowed detective who cannot shake hands without needing to wash, he makes Jonathan Creek look like Boomtown in this whimiscal pantomime, shot with the unchallenging, old-fashioned slickness of Murder, She Wrote.

San Francisco provides the local colour, Bitty Schram plays the all-important sidekick, Monk's brassy nurse/assistant Sharona Fleming, but the real draw is the starring bundle of tics and quirks played by Tony Shalhoub, a rightly treasured actor who excels at introverts and eccentrics. This week's episode has a diverting enough plot--the wife of a former police
commissioner is discovered by a psychic at the foot of a ravide--but it is the idea that a mentally ill detective is both amusing and endearing that lends this show its peculiarly intriguing, slightly dubious edge.

At times, Monk's disorder is played for laughs--it's often left for the actors around him to narrate his thought processes, as they would with Flipper or Lassie--but mostly it seems like an excuse for him to wander off in search of a sink, then stumble across vital evidence. A detective that hears voices, a private eye with an eating disorder--who know where it will end? But for now, this is amiable enough to ensure your conscience--like Monk's hands--remain clear."