Tonight, we say goodbye to one of television’s most beloved and unique detectives. Adrian Monk is certainly an unlikely hero and it’s perhaps for that reason that viewers will miss him so.

Monk tells the tale of a brilliant San Francisco detective (Tony Shalhoub) who, following the death of his wife in a car bombing, has a nervous breakdown. After being a recluse for three years, Monk returns to the force, barely able to control his obsessive-compulsive disorder. While his phobias often make it difficult for him to function, he’s an incredibly observant sleuth in part because of them.

The long-running USA series has also featured the talents of Jason Gray-Stanford, Ted Levine, Traylor Howard, Stanley Kamel, Bitty Schram, Emmy Clarke, Kane Ritchotte, and Hector Elizondo.

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While filming the last episode, Howard, who’s played Monk’s assistant Natalie for the past five years, reflected on the end of the show and her co-star. She said, “It doesn’t seem quite real… It’ll be weird not to work with Tony a lot. He’s such a lovely man. And I adore him, and it’s such a great part for a woman and all that stuff.”

Shalhoub didn’t want to know how his character’s story would finish until it was time to shoot the last episodes. He says that he likes the way the show is going out and shared, “When I read the finale, I was really moved and very satisfied. It exceeded my expectations. I thought it was going to be tricky to pull off. It’s a daunting episode emotionally. I discovered, once I was in it, that it all started to come to me. I had been loaded up for eight years.”

In terms of the finale being satisfying for fans, Shalhoub said, “I think what they will feel is kind of a magnification of what I believe they’ve been feeling all along, which is kind of mixed about Monk: Feel good for him, bad for him, frustrated for him… Hoping for his success and for his healing, his recovery.”

While the Monk series finale was written to give the show closure, the cast aren’t necessarily done with their characters just yet. Shalhoub shared,”We’ve talked about a Monk feature. We’ve been talking about that for a long time. The cast would love to do it. But there’s really nothing hard and fast in the pipeline.” In another interview, the actor said, “I just don’t know. I never say never.”

What do you think? Would you like to see Monk and his friends return for a movie?

Image courtesy USA.