USA Network has greenlit a seventh season of “Monk” and will use the Tony Shalhoub starrer to anchor an aggressive summer schedule of originals, reports Variety.
This summer the NBC-owned cable channel will have fresh episodes of no less than seven series — a number unlikely to be surpassed by any other cable channel, according to USA executive VP of original programming Jeff Wachtel.
In addition to “Monk” — which will return with new episodes in May — Wachtel plans to run fresh episodes of “Psych,” “The Starter Wife,” “Burn Notice” and newcomer “In Plain Sight” during the warm weather months. A new batch of “Law & Order: Criminal Intent” episodes, originally slated for March, has been pushed to summer because of the Writers Guild strike.
The seventh series on USA’s summer slate has yet to be decided. USA expects to greenlight a couple of pilots in the next few months with the aim of launching one of them as a series in the summer.
Despite “Monk’s” value to USA, the show’s pricetag could make the seventh season the last.
“We have to be thinking of that,” Wachtel said. Andy Breckman is “starting to wrap up the show’s mythology if this is, in fact, the final season.”
