Tony Shalhoub Takes on One Last Case in New Monk Movie

Get the wet wipes ready: Adrian Monk will be back on the case in a new film premiering December 8 on Peacock. Tony Shalhoub is donning the tweed suit and fastidious demeanor once more for Mr. Monk’s Last Case: A Monk Movie, which will round up all of the old gang: Ted Levine, Traylor Howard, Jason Gray-Stanford, Melora Hardin (Trudy may be dead, but she lives on in flashbacks), and Hector Elizondo.

It’s been 14 years since Andy Breckman’s blue sky show wrapped its eight-season run on USA. Mr. Monk’s Last Case will be a very personal one for the unconventional detective, who regularly dubbed his perspicacity and knack for solving seemingly impossible mysteries “a blessing and a curse.” When Monk’s stepdaughter Molly Evans (played as an adult by Caitlin McGee), now a journalist, needs his help solving her fiancé's murder, he’ll have to fight through his fears, which have apparently only gotten worse since the start of the COVID-19 pandemic. He won’t have to do it alone, of course; Captain Stottlemeyer (Levine) and Natalie Teeger (Howard) will be by his side, with Randy Disher (Gray-Stanford) providing his moral support from New Jersey — we hope that’s the case, and that his relationship with Sharona (Bitty Schram) hasn’t fallen apart. Monk is also presumably still in Dr. Bell’s (Elizondo) care (wonder how they handled meeting via Zoom for all those years).

Peacock released first-look images for the 90-minute film, which also stars James Purefoy (Sex Education, Hap and Leonard, and A Discovery of Witchesi) as someone named Rick Eden, who is, according to Entertainment Weekly, "an egotistical billionaire obsessed with becoming the first civilian to orbit the Earth." (There seems to be a lot of that going around.)

All photos courtesy of Peacock

In a statement about the follow-up film, Breckman noted that the world “has changed mightily” in the 12 years since we last saw Monk — ICYMI, Peacock released the short "Mr. Monk Shelters in Place" in 2020 — and this new Monk “reflects the changing world," presumably one in which he's had to fight people for the bleach and disinfectant. 

“We’re so delighted to have made a movie version of Monk,” Breckman effused, “and we are thrilled that every one of our stars were so enthusiastic about coming back. But in coming back, we wanted to do a film that was worthy of our legacy. Mr. Monk’s Last Case is a story that is powerful, emotional, funny, heartwarming, and has something to say about the human condition. And it will be both familiar and surprising.”

Monk is the latest USA series to be revived, one film at a time, by Peacock: Psych: The Movie, Psych 2: Lassie Come Home, and Psych 3: This Is Gus followed the ongoing adventures of Shawn (James Roday Rodriguez) and Gus (Dulé Hill). All three movies were incredibly charming, sometimes surprisingly seasonal fare; Psych 2 in particular was a lovely tribute to Timothy Omundson, who had a massive stroke in 2017 but made his welcome return to the world of fake and real detectives. And the Great Suits Awakening of 2023 has already proven there's gas left in the tank of USA procedurals, so, despite the finality that the first part of the title suggests, the subtitle — A Monk Movie, rather than The Monk Movie — leaves some room for doubt/hope. 

Danette Chavez is the Editor-in-Chief of Primetimer and its biggest fan of puns.