Andy Breckman (b.
March 3,
1955) is a television and film writer and a
radio personality. He is the co-creator (with
David Hoberman) and executive producer of the
Emmy Award-winning television series
Monk on the
USA Network, and is co-host of
WFMU radio's long-running conceptual comedy program
Seven Second Delay. He has written screenplays for a number of comedy films including
Sgt. Bilko and
Rat Race and is frequently hired as a "
script doctor" to inject humorous content into scripts written by other
screenwriters.
Although he started out professionally as a comedy writer, Breckman's biggest success to date,
Monk, is a murder-mystery with a humorous edge. Breckman told
New Jersey Monthly that he was a voracious reader of the works of
Arthur Conan Doyle,
John D. MacDonald, and other authors of “solvable”
mysteries, as well as being a big fan of the TV series
Columbo. “In a way, it’s similar to comedy writing,” he says. “It’s puzzles and puzzle solving. Very logical.” His planned follow-up to
Monk,
Uncle Nigel (in development for the USA Network), has a
detective theme.
In August 2009, USA Network launched
Little Monk, a
spinoff series that portrays the main character, detective
Adrian Monk, as a child. Breckman is part of the show's team of writers.