MUMBAI: US cable broadcaster USA Network has announced that its funny detective Monk is doing well in the ratings swepstakes.

It claims that this Sunday 6 February it ran past all other cable competitors in the US when it aired the show. USA ranked number one in prime time on Sunday night. It attracted 1,177,000 viewers in the 25-54 age group with the 10 pm telecast of Monk.

USA Network had a 6-11 pm back-to-back marathon programme block which ran opposite the NFL Superbowl on 6 February.

For the uninitiated Monk played by Tony Shalhoub who won a Screen Actors Guild Award for his role on Saturday has suffered from intensified obsessive- compulsive disorder and a variety of phobias since the murder of his wife, Trudy, in 1997. Despite his photographic memory and his amazing ability to piece tiny clues together, he is now on psychiatric leave from the San Francisco Police Department.

Aided by his friend and practical nurse, Sharona Fleming (Bitty Schram), Monk works as a freelance detective/consultant. He is looking to convince his former boss, Captain Stottlemeyer (Ted Levine), to allow him to return to the force. Stottlemeyer wavers between admiration for Monk and annoyance at his eccentricities.

Moreover, he harbors serious doubts about the wisdom of allowing Monk to carry a gun. Stottlemeyer's second-in-command, Lieutenant Disher (Jason Gray-Stanford), also has his doubts about Monk but seems to be developing a reluctant admiration for the 'defective detective'.

USA claims to rank first in all of basic cable for the first quarter of this year to date in prime in P18-49 (1.1, tied with TNT).