Review: For a murder mystery, ‘Bad Monkey’ sure knows how to have a good time
There is a monkey in “Bad Monkey,” a new miniseries premiering Wednesday on Apple TV+ and based on the book of the same name by Carl Hiaasen, but apart from one affectionate bite on an ear and an inability — or perhaps a refusal — to do tricks, it doesn’t do anything bad.
In fact, the monkey, named Driggs, is quite adorable. (It is less, admittedly, adorable on the page.) In any case, “Bad Monkey” is a more arresting title than “Adorable Monkey,” and better suited to a story of fraud and murder under a tropical sun.
Set in Hiaasen’s customary South Florida sloshing grounds, with trips to the Bahamas, it stays mostly true to the author’s genial spirit, following his main plot, with the usual adjustments and interpolations, building out minor characters and throwing in some anomalous magical realism to soften the blow of one of its several intertwined story lines. Developed by “Scrubs” creator and “Ted Lasso” co-creator Bill Lawrence, it’s like three or four episodes of an episodic television series mashed into one, in a generally tasty, unfussy way — not so much a meat and potatoes production as fried shrimp and beer.
It’s a comedy, mostly, with folksy, tall-tale narration by Tom Nowicki and enough banter to fill all six “Thin Man” movies, whose combined length this 10-episode series nearly equals — though you couldn’t exactly call it banter, as it’s mostly laconic chatterbox hero Andrew Yancy (Vince Vaughn) doing the talking. Yancy is a former police detective in the Florida Keys, on suspension for having used his car to push his girlfriend’s husband’s golf cart — with her husband — into the sea. Bonnie Witt, played by Michelle Monaghan, is the girlfriend, a sexy, slightly dangerous bibliophile whose real name is not Bonnie Witt.
Vehicular assault, adultery and his creative attempts to sabotage the sale of a monstrous yellow spec house next door notwithstanding, Yancy is 97% a good guy, upright where it matters, dogged in a way he can’t help — the sort of hero who remains at least outwardly unruffled in any situation and whose company, in the appealing person of Vaughn, is strangely relaxing. Sensitive to nature, he enjoys his beautiful ocean view and the wildlife that comes to his property and more than once points out that the streetlights are red so just-hatched baby turtles don’t confuse them with the moon and head away from the sea rather than into it. And he really hates that big yellow house.
Vince Vaughn and Bill Lawrence were once poker buddies trying to make their way in Hollywood. As they both ascended, they never had the chance to work together, until now.
Meanwhile, in the Bahamas, on the island of Andros, young fisherman Neville Stafford (Ronald Peet, charming), the proprietor of the eponymous monkey, has a parallel problem — the seaside shack his father left him, and in which he would be content to spend the rest of his days, is being threatened by the development of a resort. Neville is being more immediately threatened by the developer’s local thug, Egg (David St. Louis), completely amoral and frightening but with a lovely singing voice.
A severed human arm, reeled in by a fishing tourist, comes into Yancy’s keeping when the local sheriff tasks him with transporting it to the Miami police in hopes that it will relieve him of that headache. This brings him into contact with medical examiner Rosa Campesino (Natalie Martinez, sparky, spunky), who, you know and I know, will end up in some sort of relationship with our hero. (They bond over mango popsicles.)
Yancy comes to believe that what looks like an accident — shark? propellor? — may just be murder, especially after meeting Eve Stripling (Meredith Hagner), the widow of the identified owner of the severed arm. And with no official standing, he sets out to investigate, towing Rosa in his wake, much to the exasperated concern of his best friend and former partner, Rogelio Burton (John Ortiz), whom Yancy constantly encourages to be more emotionally expressive.
Through a number of twists and turns, Yancy’s quest will lead to Andros, where Eve turns up alongside the resort’s developer, Christopher Grunion (Rob Delaney), and where Neville, encouraged by friends, has turned to the mysterious, imperious woman known as the Dragon Queen (Jodie Turner-Smith), a practitioner of Obeah, for magical help in keeping his house.
The Bahama scenes, especially the Dragon Queen’s expanded story — she’s a major character here — are tonally distinct from the rest of the series. They run closer to straight drama, shaped and powered by Turner-Smith’s commanding performance — indeed, hers is the only thread in the series that might be called moving, the rest being interesting, amusing, exciting or fun. As we get nearer to a reckoning, bad characters get worse, desperation ramps up the danger, and there’s a hurricane. But this is not the sort of series that will leave evil unpunished or afflict the good with senseless tragedy. It believes in happiness.
Famous faces in the large and universally impressive cast include Zach Braff “as you’ve never seen him” as a pill-popping Medicare fraudster and Scott Glenn as Jim, Yancy’s spiritually inclined father. Bob Clendenin is funny as a needy, talkative pilot, and Gonzalo Menendez earns his hisses as a crooked cop. L. Scott Caldwell as the Dragon Queen’s grandmother; Charlotte Lawrence as Eve’s stepdaughter, a Christian hipster; and Nina Grollman, as Madeline, a young woman on whom Yancy keeps a watchful eye after her boyfriend is murdered, all make the most of their screen time. Alex Moffat plays the glad-handing developer behind the big yellow house; he doesn’t care what happens to the baby turtles.
Even the small parts, of which there are many more, are more than usually substantial, as if Lawrence felt it would be unfair to give any actor too little to do.
What makes “Bad Monkey” special is that there is nothing special about it. It’s a little wayward at times, what with its huge cast of characters and myriad plot lines, some of which are, strictly speaking, unnecessary, but it gets the job done in a good old-fashioned colorful way. Where many streaming mysteries make a fetish of style, depth, sociopolitical relevance and formal novelty, aiming to become conversation starters, the conversation around “Bad Monkey” might run simply like this:
“Seen that show ‘Bad Monkey’?”
“Yeah, it’s good.”
“Cool.”
“Cool.”
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