Monk: Season Two

In the best tradition of such classic small-screen “whodunits” as Murder, She Wrote and Diagnosis Murder, the beloved Monk serves up complex murder mysteries whose solutions rely on the perceptive analyses of seemingly unimportant clues and the protagonist's knowledge of obscure and arcane information. The first season introduced viewers to Adrian Monk (Tony Shalhoub), the brilliant but intensely neurotic, obsessive-compulsive, and multi-phobic detective haunted by his failure to apprehend his wife's killer. Bounced from the police force for medical reasons, Monk is a private investigator who relies heavily on his assistant, Sharona Fleming (Bitty Schram), in his limited dealings with the outside world. Monk's cases generally bring him back into contact with an old nemesis, Captain Leland Stottlemeyer (Ted Levine), who has little patience for Monk's odd behavior but great respect for his deductive abilities. The 16 second season (2003-2004) episodes collected here continue Monk's string of cleverly formulated and well-written entries, relying somewhat more on “stunt” casting to lend novelty to the formula. Andrew McCarthy is the chief suspect in the season opener, “Mr. Monk Goes Back to School,” in which the eccentric investigator determines that an English teacher's apparent suicide is actually a murder, based on grammatical errors in the note she purportedly left behind. Lolita Davidovich plays a glamorous trapeze artist in the outstanding “Mr. Monk Goes to the Circus,” while another of the season's highlights, “Mr. Monk and the Very, Very Old Man,” introduces Glenne Headly as Stottlemeyer's wife, a documentary filmmaker convinced that one of her subjects has been murdered (this particular episode, which offers some insights into the Stottlemeyer home, was nominated for an Edgar Allan Poe award by the Mystery Writers of America). Former child star Danny Bonaduce plays himself in “Mr. Monk Meets the Playboy,” which finds the detective matching wits with the publisher of a girlie magazine, and John Turturro makes his debut as Monk's agoraphobic older brother Ambrose in another season standout, “Mr. Monk and the Three Pies.” Obviously challenged to maintain Monk's quirks without letting them get overly familiar, the show's writers have set a very high standard in the second season, and armchair detectives will find themselves hard-pressed to keep up with Adrian in these convoluted but charming episodes. DVD extras include a behind-the-scenes featurette, two character profiles, and a set tour. Highly recommended. (E. Hulse)