I thought about Monk when I was hacking around the golf course last weekend.

So what's the connection between television's intuitive, obsessive-compulsive sleuth and a golf course?

It's allergy season, an appropriate time for Monk (8 p.m. Friday, USA cable) to premiere a new season.

As fans found out during last year's premiere season, Adrian Monk is allergic to life.

Heights bother him. So do a variety of foods.

He's developed an abnormal fear of germs, crowds and virtually everything else.

When someone near him blows his nose, Monk sneezes. That's a bit of an exaggeration,

But fans get the point.

Monk's psychological disorder, caused by the tragic unsolved murder of his wife, cost him his position as a legendary homicide detective on the San Francisco police force.

Since it's difficult for him to work (or survive) full time, he's called to solve baffling crimes. And in Friday night's seasonal premiere, he delivers a murderer after his cop cohorts initially rule that an attractive young woman leaped to her death from a high school clock tower.

If you haven't seen Monk all this probably sounds like a gimmicky, contrived way to produce a typical cop show.

But the characterization by Golden Globe award winning Tony Shalhoub, combined with deft plotting and elements of compassion and humor, provide an antidote for any viewer allergic to the typical squeal-the-tires cops stories. As a bonus there's a nice personal relationship between Monk and his nurse Sharona (Bitty Schram).

In its freshman season, Monk became the highest-rated original scripted series in the history of basic cable programming. And its popularity spilled onto the network level.

A new programming gimmick called "repurposing" means network series move to basic cable after being aired on the network schedule. This is currently the case with two NBC series - Law and Order: SVU, which shows up on USA, and Boomtown airing on TNT.

The popularity of Monk reversed that procedure,

Last winter, ABC, bereft of prime time dramatic hours, pulled Monk into its Thursday night lineup after episodes were aired on USA.

And the ratings were good.

Shalhoub, a veteran film and TV character actor, may be most familiar to viewers for his role on Wings (Antonio, the romantic cabbie) and as the star of a short-lived NBC comedy, Stark Raving Mad, playing an eccentric writer.

Monk feels his obsessive personality actually feeds his genius for crime-solving observations.

Monk has to be observant to survive.

As he tells Sharona: "My compulsion is both a gift and a curse."

Shalhoub seldom falls out of character.

Friday night's show features a segment in which Monk, listening to an outline of the teacher's death, hops along a cobblestone path while trying not to step on the cracks.

Plot wise, Monk often resembles that beloved raincoat-clad Columbo as a crime solver. (Monk's wardrobe trademark seems to be his tieless white shirt buttoned at the color.)

Most of Monk's cases are whodunits in the traditional meaning of the term.

In Friday's hour, Monk tells the audience he knows that a fellow teacher (Andrew McCarthy) killed the young woman. Monk's job is to prove it.

Monk has a 16-episode run this summer with seven more scheduled after the first of the year.

OK, here comes the cliché: Monk can become compulsive viewing.

NEWS NOTES: Public television's worthy Frontline (9 tonight, KRMA-Channel 6), offers The Other Drug War, which examines the activities of uninsured Maine seniors who have organized bus trips across the Canadian boarder to buy prescription drugs for a fraction of what they were paying in the U.S.

The bus rides provide a jumping off place for an investigation of drug prices charged by the pharmaceutical industry.

• ABC's Nightline (10:35 p.m. 7News) begins a two-part series tonight looking behind the scenes at a national evangelical preaching competition on the high school level.

Called The Messengers, the half-hours profile three high school students who are found in churches rather than athletic fields.

Executive producer Leroy Sievers notes the mainstream media, including Nightline, have not devoted much time to covering evangelical Christians.

"Or goal with this series is not only to tell a great story but to begin to pay more attention to a large community in this country that often goes uncovered."

TODAY'S NOSTALGIA: On June 20, 1948, introduced its first variety series, Toast of the Town, hosted by newspaper columnist Ed Sullivan, Later renamed the Ed Sullivan Show, the hour was on the air for 23 years.