Although the USA Network program Psych has its faults at present, it at least has a good chance to right the ship and become a successful show to pair with Monk on Friday nights. The network’s previous attempt to follow Monk with an eccentric detective—a remake of the English series Touching Evil—failed, and in my view it happened mainly because the program’s tone was inconsistent and largely too different from that of Monk.

Like its BBC predecessor, Touching Evil dealt with extremely grim subject matter, but the producers tried to spice it up a bit by making the lead character a bit kooky and increasing the prominence of a bizarre subsidiary character whom they made more zany than in the British original. Although Jeffrey Donovan did an excellent job of portraying the lead character, Detective Dave Creegan, and Pruitt Taylor Vince was very interesting as Cyril, the attempt to make an extremely grim show more pleasant didn’t work. It’s as if they had tried to make Adrian Monk the central character in Criminal Minds. Audiences didn’t take to it.

Psych looks like a better fit both in its central concept and as a companion program for Monk. Improvement of some of the characterizations appears to be called for, but if that should happen—something one would think rather urgent on a channel that advertises its offerings as "Characters Welcome"—it has a decent chance of making it.