The brilliant detective Adrian Monk (Tony Shalhoub) has been retired from solving murders for just over a decade. But when his step-daughter’s fiancé dies the day before their wedding the personal stakes involved make him return to what he is best at. 

Between 2002-2009 there were 124 episodes of Monk across 8 seasons of television. I am fairly certain I saw a few here and there and appreciated Tony Shalhoub’s performance if not the lightweight nature of the episode of the week whodunnit series. 

But with the current popularity of the murder mystery genre high I thought why not step into a lightweight whodunnit as a bit of light entertainment? And certainly Mr. Monk’s Last Case achieves what it sets out to do. 

The film does a good job of explaining Monk’s absence; he has been writing a book on his exploits with hilarious outcomes. And the Covid Pandemic has brought out the worst in his OCD and fear of germs. A number of his friends and colleagues from the show return to assist him here. We have his step-daughter Molly (Caitlin McGee) who could possibly have looked more distraught over the death of her fiancé, his assistant Natalie (Traylor Howard) and detective colleague Randy (Jason Gray-Stanford) who both have a lot of fun. But the best of the returnees are his psychiatrist Dr. Bell (Hector Elizondo) and police Captain Stottlemeyer (Ted Levine) who both steal all the scenes they are in quietly and loudly respectively. 

The villain of the piece is Jeff Bezos stand in Rick Eden (James Purefoy). A man whose online sales company has become so big that he wants to build rockets and go into space. This film rolls more like Columbo where it is more about how they did it rather than who. But I guess when you get James Purefoy to play the villain it would be hard to hide who it was! 

I hardly know the show and was subtly aware of how much of a fun and reverent return this film is. It is really clear that fans will be in for a treat. 

Yes there were moments I did not like. It has a tv movie budget that is at times very noticeable (an early scuba scene hilariously so), the villain is very nearly pantomime levels of bad and the ending is very cheesy! But I think on its own merits it is doing exactly what fans would want. 

It is however funny in places, warm hearted and features Tony Shalhoub on top form. 

Fans will be happy.