Watched the pilot episode last night. I'm pretty sure this show came about because someone said "Hey, what should we do with these unused
Monk scripts?"
I know Monk is a take off of Sherlock Holmes, but this version is a complete rip-off of Monk except the main character is a drug addict instead of having OCD, and it's set in New York instead of San Francisco.
Aside from the obvious similarities of noticing a bunch of minor things and putting them together in way to solve crimes, here are the all-too-striking similarities between the two shows:
1. The sidekick is a female in the medical profession (Sharona was a nurse, Watson was a surgeon), who more of less unwillingly goes along with the main character.
2. Monk/Sherlock works as a civilian contractor to the police department.
3. Monk/Sherlock's best friend is a Police Captain and former co-worker who spends too much time working cases and not actually being a Police Captain.
4. The Police Captain is partnered with kind of a dim-witted detective who doesn't like the main character upstaging them (Randy didn't like Monk in the beginning).
5. Both characters breakdowns came about because of a woman. Monk had a breakdown because of the death of his wife, and Sherlock went into drug addiction because someting happened to a woman he was in a relationship with (obviously more of this to come).