Neil Diamond: Hot August Night, NYC (8pm, CBS) - Performances from Diamond's recent concerts at Madison Square Garden in New York, plus a visit to his childhood home in Brooklyn.

Monk (9pm, USA) - Adewale Akinnuoye Agbaje is a visiting African visitor who is investigating his wife's death.

Psych (10pm, USA) - Gus and Shawn find the wreckage of an airplane, along with a dying billionaire whose dying words indicate he was murdered.

Real Time with Bill Maher (10pm, HBO) - Bill's guests are Ashton Kutcher, columnist Ross Douthat, comic Dana Gould, General Anthony Zinni (USMC Ret), and Mr. Angelina Jolie (aka Brad Pitt).

Late Night with Jimmy Fallon (12:35am, NBC) - Look for January Jones (Betty) of "Mad Men."

Sharkbite Summer (8pm, Discovery) - Chronicling the shark attacks in the summer of 2001 (dubbed by the media as The Summer of the Shark), including the infamous severing of an 8-year-old boy's right arm in Florida.

Monk (9pm, USA) - The premiere of Monk's 8th and final season has our favorite detective guarding a former child star (Elizabeth Perkins) who turns out to be pretty different from the character she once played on TV. Monk tries to see past her many peccadillos to find the person who is trying to kill her.

Psych (10pm, USA) - Friday nights are complete once again, with the return of "Monk" and "Psych" to USA. Tonight marks season four for "Psych." Gus and Shawn (Dulé Hill and James Roday) meet an elusive art thief (Cary Elwes) in Vancouver, and discover he's not everything he seems.

20/20 (10pm, ABC) - A profile of a Philadelphia man who was born with his heart growing outside his body. After undergoing numerous surgeries, 33-year-old Christopher Wall now leads a normal life.

Just watching the commercials on USA showing Tony Shalhoub's obsessive-compulsive detective Adrian Monk packing up his stuff and
carrying away all those neat little boxes makes me one sad little couch potato. 

Tomorrow night marks the beginning of the eighth and final season of "Monk," and I for one feel like I'm about to lose a very dear, sweet, quirky old friend.

TV Week is reporting that Bitty Schram, who played Monk's original caretaker Sharona Fleming, will make a guest appearance during the eighth and final season of the USA Network show.

YEAH!

I'm in the Sharona camp; I always liked the way Sharona handled Monk; for my taste Bitty matched Tony Shaloub's talent and quirkiness much better than Traylor Howard (Natalie Teeger).

The new season starts airing this summer.

MONK
Friday, November 29, 9pm, USA

USA's fairly new tradition of gifting us each year with special holiday episodes of Monk and Psych is definitely one I'm on board with. The season ended in the summer and we don't get the new season until January. Sure, the single episodes make us long for more, but it's a gift and we don't take those for granted.