Joanne Weintraub

The phone calls and e-mails from readers started trickling in around the first of the year.

I got another one just last week, as plaintive as all the others, as if the asker were hoping against hope.

"Is that 'Monk' series ever coming back, the one about the detective? I really liked (or loved) (or don't watch anything on TV except) that series."

'Monk'

That's the kind of show this USA comedy-drama is: just offbeat enough that people who enjoy it seem to think that hardly anyone else would.

But in fact, "Monk," which returns this week for a second season, set a new ratings record last year for an original scripted series on basic cable. Its success even led ABC to pick up the first season after the episodes had aired on USA.

This year, Green Bay native Tony Shalhoub, who plays homicide investigator Adrian Monk, was the dark-horse winner of the Golden Globe for best actor in a comedy. And at least one Hollywood handicapper says the series has a decent shot at an Emmy nomination next month.

Shalhoub's character is the latest in a long, long line of detectives with a gimmick. But Monk's is more interesting than most: He has an obsessive-compulsive disorder that forces him to dot every "i" and cross every "t" or suffer the tortures of hell.

Making his case
I don't mean the dotting and crossing part figuratively, either. Watch him in Friday's season opener, where he goes undercover as a high school teacher and takes the better part of two minutes just to write his name on the blackboard. Life isn't easy when you've got to be sure your lowercase "k" isn't a quarter-inch taller than your upper-case "M."

Naturally, Monk is as brainy as he is obsessive. The combination allows him, with the help of a shrewd, sexy assistant named Sharona (Bitty Schram) - think Erin Brockovich with a Brooklyn accent - to sniff out the killers and keep them at bay while San Francisco police Capt. Leland Stottlemeyer (Ted Levine) is barking up all the wrong trees.

Sure, it's formulaic. But Shalhoub makes Monk a truly original kind of hero.

Lots of contemporary good guys have their moments of anxiety or even terror, but Monk lives there.

Not the least of his fears is that he'll look just as ridiculous as he feels when he's clinging to a stair railing or pouring regular coffee into the decaf so that the two pots will be at identical levels. You can see it in Shalhoub's wary eyes and apologetic body language.

Yet Monk also knows what he's good at: deductive reasoning, Sherlock Holmes-style. He's as much compelled to get to the bottom of things as he is to avoid cracks in the sidewalk or smudges on the doorknob.

Will ABC feel compelled to pick up "Monk" again this season?

A spokeswoman for the network said last week that no decision had been reached. I bet an Emmy nomination wouldn't hurt the show's chances a bit.

E-mail Joanne Weintraub at jweintraub@journalsentinel.com.