Author Carl Hiaasen has made a career in crime fiction portraying criminals as stupid oafs while his protagonists, although likeably clever, usually want to be doing something else. Hiaasen usually plays with several competing – and often zany – scenarios where each story tries to one up the next. In the end, telling a satirical tale becomes more important than meting justice.

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The new Apple TV+ series Bad Monkey adapts his 2013 novel featuring former Miami detective Andrew Yancy who stumbles into a possible murder by a lovely widow, her blaise-if-corrupt real estate developer lover, and a frozen, severed arm. Needless to say, hilarity ensues. And that hilarity, mixed with frantic, quick-talking storylines, play perfectly into showrunner Bill Lawrence’s (Scrubs, Ted Lasso, Shrinking) wheelhouse. The humor in Bad Monkey is subtle, wicked, and spot-on. The characters are crazy, lovable, and embarrassingly recognizable.

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Vince Vaughn stars as Yancy who hams up the role with charm and smooth one-liners. He chuckles and bumbles and smiles away with wayfarers. He also sports a great selection of both Hawaiian and Bahama print shirts that change more frequently than Snapchat memes. Maybe it’s that Florida humidity? But Yancy is a good guy. Yes, he wants to sit in his beachside Adirondack and sip rum in the afternoon sun, but he also knows that he is (or was) a cop and having a severed arm in his freezer is unsettling – in more than one way.

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Simultaneously in the Bahamas, Neville Stafford (Ronald Peet), who would also rather simply fish and drink beer, finds himself a victim of eminent domain and becomes homeless. What can a guy do? Well, he seeks help from a voodoo queen (Jodie Turner-Smith) who has promised murderous revenge... and maybe a little smooching on the side.

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While the stories jump from the Keys to the Bahamas, Tom Nowicki supplies a sarcastically-laced running commentary. His yarn-spinning Greek chorus style comes across a little more like The Dukes of Hazzard’s Waylon Jennings rather than The Big Lebowski’s observant Sam Elliott, but shares an equally-comfortable voice. 

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The first two episodes are written by Lawrence and directed by Marcos Siega and Erica Dunton respectively. The show is set in the Keys and aside from garish McMansions (populated by the stupidly-annoying), the overall look is whimsical: the sky is always blue, the sun always perfect. Lawrence is offering this a counterpoint to the somewhat more devious business Yancy finds himself in. Crime fiction procedural aside, Bad Monkey is playing everyone's misfortunes for laughs. Yancy tries to woo his on-the-run girlfriend (Michelle Monahan) while flirting with Miami ME Rosa (Natalie Martinez). Neville’s tribulations against ne-er-do-well developer Christopher (Rob Delaney) get deeper as he falls under a voodoo spell. Yancy’s (ex-)partner Rogelio (John Ortiz) wants to ignore him, especially after Yancy suffers a most deliberate demotion from detective to food inspector. But all of this simply seems like another quirky day in the Keys. Even when the self-styled “Pussy Magnet” gets gunned down in the streets. 

 

Lawrence perfectly portrays Hiaasen’s overall themes of criminal stupidity and suitable justice. And it is all shown as a good time. Instead of pounding the beat searching for clues or roughing up the usual suspects, Lawrence is instead advancing situational entertainment through Yancy and Neville. The end result is a goofball approach to the crime genre that is refreshingly offbeat and entirely entertaining.