By John Crook
 
Summertime traditionally marks an off-season for television, dotting the schedule with also-rans not quite good enough for the September-through-May big leagues.

Now and then, however, the summer doldrums give way to something fresh, exciting and utterly original -- something such as "Monk," which premieres Friday, July 12 (9 p.m. ET), on USA Network.

This two-hour TV movie, to be followed by 11 one-hour weekly episodes, stars Tony Shalhoub ("Wings") in a tour-de-force performance as Adrian Monk, a once-formidable San Francisco homicide detective whose life has collapsed following the unsolved murder of his wife.

That tragic case has left Monk with a crippling psychological disorder comprising a host of neuroses and a strong obsessive-compulsive streak. This condition has cost Monk his job, although occasionally he is called in informally to assist his former boss, Capt. Stottlemeyer (Ted Levine, "Moby Dick" ), with the assistance of Sharona (Bitty Schram, "A League of Their Own"), his caregiver and girl Friday.

Monk is a gratifyingly complex and unpredictable character, one that calls upon the gifted Shalhoub to keep one foot in the world of comedy and another securely positioned in the poignant reality of Monk's dilemma. Shalhoub says he relishes that duality in his character.

"What we set out to do is kind of alternate, or flip-flop, between realistic drama and the high comedy, to find a way for those two things to kind of co-exist without undercutting one another," explains Shalhoub, also one of the show's producers. "I think we really succeeded in the pilot, because there are moments of real pathos when we sense his concern and pain over his dead wife."

One perfect example of a scene that mingles comedy and pathos finds Monk in hot pursuit of a would-be assassin who is fleeing across city rooftops. Down on the street, Monk finds the fire escape where his quarry is likely to descend and nervously begins climbing, hoping to cut off that escape route.

Halfway up, however, Monk becomes completely paralyzed by his fear of heights and grimly clings for dear life to the ladder railing -- then endures the ultimate humiliation when his prey simply clambers down over Monk's fear-frozen form and makes his escape.

"Yeah, that's really pathetic, isn't it?" Shalhoub says, chuckling. "It takes a familiar moment from a familiar genre and tweaks and twists it into something I hope is fresh and different. We recognize all the cliches of the car chase, for example, so the challenge is to put a spin on it that gives you something you didn't expect."

"We've all seen these situations before, the chase down the fire escape, but we haven't seen what happens when you put a character like Monk in the middle of them."

Shalhoub may be a natural for this kind of role, because his two NBC sitcom roles -- luckless cabbie Antonio Scarpacci on "Wings" and darkly neurotic horror novelist Ian Stark on "Stark Raving Mad" -- likewise were comedy characters marked by a prominent streak of melancholy.

"It's funny that you are framing it this way, because until you mentioned it, I don't think I had noted that connection between Antonio and Ian Stark and Adrian Monk. That's actually pretty astute," Shalhoub says. "But that [duality] really does appeal to me. When you go back to classic comedians, even back in silent films, like Buster Keaton and Charlie Chaplin, there was always sort of a sadness there that was funny and sweet at the same time."

"That's what comedy is, you know; comedy is other people's pain. That's how I've always looked at it. But there is an important distinction in that the form of 'Monk' is not really a situation comedy. It's kind of a hybrid."

While he acknowledges that there are questions of taste involved in a series that, however indirectly, wrings laughter from a genuinely serious psychological disorder, Shalhoub says the show's creators have taken pains not to exploit Monk's affliction. Far from it, in fact.

"I think we are covered because this is by no means an out-and-out comedy, and in no sense are we exploiting this disorder, which would be pretty appalling," he explains. "We have serious moments where it is acknowledged that Monk is in a difficult period in his life, but there are other moments where his neuroses unexpectedly become almost an asset to him, perhaps in his obsessive attention to details that other people might miss or his different way of looking at things. He simply looks at the universe in a different way, and he obviously is very brilliant. He isn't a figure of ridicule."

"We hope that a lot of people see, if not themselves, then someone they know or work with in Monk. I mean, it's really a question of degrees, isn't it? We all have our personal tics and idiosyncratic habits, and what Monk is going through is habit magnified a thousand times. We all have these things in us; Monk just has them to a far greater degree."

While it will not figure into every episode, the investigation into the murder of Monk's wife will be an ongoing story line for the series, Shalhoub says, but beyond that, expect the unexpected.

"I think the best stuff that's on TV now is the really twisted stuff, like 'Six Feet Under,' which is so brilliant and unpredictable and like nothing else you've ever seen," he says. "Our goal with 'Monk' is to lull the audience into thinking they know what's around a corner and then surprising them with something totally different."