Adrian Monk is in trouble. He has had to return the advance for his autobiography – apparently readers won’t be interested in pages and pages describing his kitchen appliances – but he feels that things are coming to an end. His friends have all left to pursue their own lives and all he has is Molly, his murdered wife’s daughter who looked after him during the pandemic. He is counting down the days before he can reunite himself with his wife…

… but he has one last case to solve. Molly’s fiancé dies in an accident bungee jumping off a bridge. Despite being extremely careful whenever he jumped, measuring and re-measuring the length of his cord, when he jumped his cord was six feet too long. Monk is sure he knows who “the guy” is – but can he bring the most powerful man in America to justice? And what about after that?

This TV movie, set 12 years after the TV series, came out last year, but it still isn’t available to stream over here, but you can buy it on Amazon Prime – so I finally got tired of waiting for it and bought it.

Let’s tackle the thing that I would guess bothers most people about this. When we left Monk, he had finally found Trudi’s killer and had found a measure of peace. He was finally moving forward in his life but when we meet him here, he’s lower than we’ve ever seen him, with only Trudi’s ghost/memory keeping him from pulling the metaphorical trigger. Once Molly’s fiancé dies, and Monk becomes convinced that he was murdered, he is determined to find justice one last time, but his personal plans only seem to be delayed, not changed.

I’ll admit, I found it disappointing at first, but it added one of the most personal subplots that there’s been in an episode of Monk, and it’s pretty powerful. I found it really interesting the choice that despite his old friends showing up – Stottlemeyer, Natalie, Randy and Dr Bell – only one of them suspects what Adrian is going through. I don’t think it’s much of a spoiler to say that the story doesn’t end with Adrian committing suicide, but I thought the resolution was handled well. And it definitely didn’t make me cry. Definitely not. Although it does raise a question as to exactly what was happening…

The main part of the story is a pretty decent “how did someone commit a murder” story with Monk being Monk. I’ll be honest – I thought it took him far too long to spot the murder weapon, but as the crucial clue involved a cameo from Richard Kind, I’ll let him off. There are more plot holes than you might expect – why was a certain person on the bridge, how exactly does one make such a murder weapon, and, to be honest, the guy does seem to give up pretty easily despite there not being a massive amount of evidence against him.

But who cares about that? The band is back together, with all of them getting a little something to do – there is one excellent joke at Randy’s expense – and Tony Shaloub is as excellent as ever. The scenes with Hector Elizondo (who Shaloub persuaded to come out of retirement to film) are particularly touching.

Is there going to be any more Monk? There’s no news but apparently Shaloub is keen. Let’s hope there’s more to come, but if not, this is a pretty good epilogue to the series.