I have watched a lot of murder mystery, detective shows and movies and this is not among the top ones, but the 8/10 user score will lead you to believe it is.
I watched a few episodes when it was first on and couldn't get into it then but I recently tried to give it another shot only watching the best rated episodes and my feelings towards it have not changed.
The first issue is their annoying and inaccurate portrayal of OCD via the main character, Monk. It's not just OCD but they seem to be mixing other things too like autism, social anxiety, and mysophobia (aka germaphobia). It is constant throughout every episode and it seems like most of the time the intention is for all of this to be somewhat comedic. It's not.
So much time is spent with his various issues that not a lot is actually left for the murder mystery, so those are very shallow and you don't feel like you really learned much to try to figure it out on your own.
In summary, it's a shallow detective murder mystery show where too much time is spent highlighting the main character's various issues, which aren't funny.
I watched a few episodes when it was first on and couldn't get into it then but I recently tried to give it another shot only watching the best rated episodes and my feelings towards it have not changed.
The first issue is their annoying and inaccurate portrayal of OCD via the main character, Monk. It's not just OCD but they seem to be mixing other things too like autism, social anxiety, and mysophobia (aka germaphobia). It is constant throughout every episode and it seems like most of the time the intention is for all of this to be somewhat comedic. It's not.
So much time is spent with his various issues that not a lot is actually left for the murder mystery, so those are very shallow and you don't feel like you really learned much to try to figure it out on your own.
In summary, it's a shallow detective murder mystery show where too much time is spent highlighting the main character's various issues, which aren't funny.