Bad Monkey, creator Bill Lawrence’s adaptation of a bestselling novel by Carl Hiaasen, is a perfect use for the trademarked comedic and dramatic stylings of lead actor Vince Vaughn and an all around showcase for one of the best ensemble casts ever assembled for a series. An off-beat, elaborately constructed dark comedy about a disgraced, but duty bound cop determined to take down a group of Florida scammers, Bad Monkey is the kind of series where the plot is so bonkers that even its most overstuffed and tangential moments are wholly captivating, and the characters burst with life, no matter how big or small. As a star vehicle for Vaughn, Bad Monkey is perfection. As an ensemble piece, it’s even better. And for Lawrence (Scrubs, Ted Lasso), it’s another winner.
Detective Andrew Yancy (Vaughn) has been demoted twice over, currently stuck working as a health inspector as penance. After upsetting top brass at his previous job in Miami, Yancy was transferred to a much lesser job in the quieter Florida Keys, where, thanks to a run in with his girlfriend’s well connected husband, he has been suspended from duty. Andrew spends most of his days drinking, staring out into the Atlantic and watching all the local wildlife, fretting about the asshole real estate developer (Alex Moffat) building an eyesore McMansion next door. At a particular low point and itching for some way to get back on duty, Andrew is approached by his partner (John Ortiz) and the local sheriff (Todd Allen Durkin) for a special assignment. A fisherman just reeled in a severed arm, and without the remainder of the body to discover, local law enforcement would really like it if this random appendage disappears. Yancy is sent to Florida to meet with the local coroner (Natalie Martinez) with hopes that the limb will match up with one of their bodies. Having no luck, Yancy is told to ditch the arm discreetly and quietly. But deep down, Andrew has a hunch that there’s foul play afoot, and he knows that if he can prove that a murder has occurred, it can fast track his return to the force.
The works of prolific journalist and fiction author Hiaasen aren’t adapted to the screen very often, and when they have been in the past, results range from mixed to bad. There are a lot of considerations when it comes to capturing what makes something like Bad Monkey unique. There has to be a lot of quirky humour that pushes things right to the edge of being cartoonish, but equally important is a sense of pervasive darkness that drives such unusual behaviour. The characters have to be amusing and charismatic in a variety of ways, but they also have to boast a lot of layers to make their actions appear complicated and in line with an elaborately woven story about gulf coast weirdos colliding with one another. Working in a darker, but still gleefully hilarious tenor than he has in the past, Lawrence and his team of writers and directors prove to be more than up to the task at hand, providing viewers with an intelligently written, character driven epic that spans multiple cultures, differing family dynamics, and a pleasingly shifting sense of morality and purpose.
Bad Monkey often takes the form of a procedural told from the perspective of an arrogant motormouth with a good heart, a pair of crooks that are inexplicably in love (and all those caught in their orbit), and everyday people (plus the titular monkey, who really isn’t all that bad) on the Bahamian island of Andros who are just trying to get by, but end up paying for the sins of the greedy white idiots encroaching on their land. But more pleasingly, Bad Monkey works as a collection of interlocking cautionary tales where all of the characters learn hard truths about themselves, whether they want to acknowledge them or not. Every character in Bad Monkey has a secret past that informs their present, and all of them are fighting battles to preserve or enhance their own slice of island paradise and peace in a world where such oases are rapidly vanishing.
The most sympathetic and important of these players is put upon islander and unlikely monkey owner Neville Stafford (Ronald Peet), who’s attempting to preserve his home and family land from the aggressive and underhanded tactics from married villains Eve and Christopher (Meredith Hagner and Rob Delaney), whose latest con involves the building of a posh resort. Christopher will bend over backwards to please Eve, but their love feels transactional at best and one sided at worst.
Andrew’s on-again-off-again girlfriend, Bonnie (Michelle Monaghan), is hiding a lot of secrets, but he’s reluctant to cut her loose, even when he starts flirting heavily with the much more stable coroner, Rosa, who sees helping Andrew as a distraction from her depressing, literal dead end within Miami PD.
Neville, out of desperation, will turn to a feared mystic known as the Dragon Queen (Jodie Turner-Smith), to put a curse on Eve and Christopher, but she has problems of her own. The Dragon Queen has had a life of mysticism and virtual isolation imposed onto her by her grandmother (L. Scott Caldwell), and a crush on the hopelessly good looking henchman (David St. Louis) of the white land grabbers could cause her to lose all objectivity.
There’s also a daughter (Charlotte Lawrence) trying to self-investigate the murder of her father, the corrupt Miami cop (Gonzalo Menendez) who got Andrew suspended, Andrew’s laid back father (Scott Glenn), a pill pushing doctor (Zach Braff), a fearful young burnout and murder witness (Nina Grollman), Neville’s longtime crush (Reese Antionette) and her precocious daughter (Amina Massai), a Russian mobster (Anthony Belevtsov), an overly chatty pilot (Bob Clendenin), a spiteful local weather-woman (Lauren Buglioli), a self-starting federal agent (Ashley Nicole Black), and a lawyer (Victor Turpin) who’s married to Andrew’s partner on the force all caught up in the mix. Oh, and it’s all narrated by a sage boat captain (Tom Nowicki) as if it’s being recounted to a bunch of tourists. This isn’t even all of the people caught up in the core plot.
To say that there’s an abundance of character throughout Bad Monkey is an understatement, and sure, some of these people could be excised without damaging Lawrence’s intricate plot all that much. Almost everything involving Monaghan’s woman of mystery and Moffat’s annoying neighbour strikes as superfluous and unnecessary in the moment, but these dalliances do offer a bit more insight into what makes Andrew a good person at heart, despite his snarky, sarcastic, sometimes antagonistic exterior.
After just a handful of episodes, antsy viewers who can already piece together what’s going on will begin to wonder if Bad Monkey can actually make it to a full ten episode season, but Lawrence, his cast, and the crew constantly find creative ways to keep the characters compelling and the story fresh. A big part of the show’s success comes from that abundance of character and Lawrence’s attention to fine details, with the fourth and eighth episodes in particular emerging as some of the best single volumes of a series ever crafted. It’s the stuff that screams out for acknowledgment and Emmy gold, but in a good way, not a showy way.
As the ringmaster and audience surrogate, Vaughn makes the most of one of his all time best roles, balancing his razor sharp delivery of snappy one liners with a pronounced sense of sadness and vulnerability that makes Andrew a uniquely likeable protagonist. Everyone else in the cast brings their absolute best to Bad Monkey, with the performers displaying boatloads of chemistry with one another no matter what characters are interacting at any given point, perfectly selling the viewer on the kind of heightened atmosphere Hiaasen’s works thrive upon. Martinez, Hagner, and Peet all shine like newly minted stars, while Smith adds another stellar performance to her already growing resume of memorable turns. But the biggest surprise for viewers will likely be Delaney, who stretches well beyond his usual comedic range for a portrait of a lonely man violently unravelling, a performance that’s at turns hilarious, bone chilling, and deeply sad.
Bad Monkey is a massive undertaking for all parties involved, but the show and all its various moving parts flow so assuredly and confidently that they make it all look easy. And that’s the perfect tone for what Lawrence is trying to achieve. Every character in Bad Monkey is trying to achieve something complicated, with a lot of elements remaining outside their control, but all of them are going to play it off like nothing is amiss. A lot of these characters operate in areas that are morally grey and sometimes sleazy, but Lawrence and his dream team of a cast are always able to tap into a deep well of humanity and sympathy that keeps things engaging even in the silliest or darkest of moments. Although Bad Monkey was a stand alone story from Hiaasen, let’s hope this isn’t the last we’ve seen of Detective Andrew Yancy. It definitely feels like Vaughn and Lawrence have only scratched the surface of what this character is capable of and there’s a lot left in the tank by the end of this island hopping journey.
Bad Monkey debuts on Apple TV+ with its first two episodes on Wednesday, August 14, 2024. A new episode will premiere each Wednesday until October 9.
