Bad Monkey starts on a beautiful Floridian day aboard a honeymoon fishing trip. A few lines of dialogue paint the groom as an obnoxious White Lotus-type character, so it's going as swimmingly as you would expect. That is until he reels in a severed arm with some irreverent rigor mortis, at which point it gets worse.
This fished-up limb is what triggers suspended Miami detective Andrew Yancy (Vince Vaughn) to start sniffing around the Florida Keys for a murder suspect. The Apple TV+ show is based on Carl Hiaasen's New York Times bestseller (which book isn't one of those?), with a couple of twists on the Death in Paradise-style format.
The 10-parter is split between Yancy's haphazard investigation and a tangential tale of gentrification in the Bahamas, told through Neville (Ronald Peet). His slice of paradise spent fishing and eating the catch is upended by Rob Delaney's evil developer, who has bought out the land supporting Neville's shack from under him.
We're taken from scene to scene by the show's husky narrator, who is also the skipper of the honeymoon charter (Tom Nowicki).
The captain is in the narration booth to steer us between the Keys and the Bahamas, since flip-flopping between the two feels like some omniscient Apple TV+ brass is changing the channel at will. Unfortunately, Bad Monkey would be better without this plodding voiceover, which often relays details we can see for ourselves.
Even said narrator admits the jumping-around is "annoying". But still, we're told to "be patient" because how this all connects will be revealed, including where the titular monkey (played by Crystal the Monkey, of Night at the Museum fame) comes in. Whether that wait is worth it is another matter.
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Peet's Neville, with a hit-and-miss Bahamian accent, doesn't quite have the charisma to match Vaughn or Jodie Turner-Smith, who goes some way to saving this half of the story. She's wily and ethereal as the sorceress Dragon Queen who can lay curses on people. Her Bahamian accent is also much better.
Back in the Keys, Vaughn plays the sarcastic affable joker fans will recognise from most of the rest of his career. Except this time, he has a catchphrase: "f**knuts". His sidekick from the Miami morgue Rosa (Natalie Martinez) is good fun, even if the romantic overtones between them aren't hugely necessary.
Michelle Monaghan is wasted as a deranged manic pixie dream girl who occasionally sleeps with Yancy but doesn't have much bearing on the plot. Scrubs alum Zach Braff pops up for two of the 10 episodes, rather fittingly as a doctor. Albeit not a good one.
The show comes from Scrubs creator Bill Lawrence, fresh after co-creating Ted Lasso for Apple TV+. Given that show's firm grasp of its feel-good tenor, the tonal handling here is more of a weird mess. Bad Monkey shoots for black comedy, and there are funny beats, but there are also moments of tragedy awkwardly brushed over. At one point a statutory rape case is badly played for laughs.
There are some good bits. One episode kicks off to the instrumental version of 50 Cent's 'P.I.M.P.', which will be catnip for Anatomy of a Fall fans, even if the Venn diagram overlap of viewership is probably slender. There are also heaps of gorgeous B-roll to soak up, with cameo appearances from flitting dolphins.
It's clear the show has had a lot of fun playing with the renowned weirdness of Floridians. There's Heather with the Weather on TV (shoutout to BBC Scotland's Heather Reid and BBC Northwest's Heather Stott for getting there first), who never gets the forecast right but is easy on the eyes. Or the deckhand with a colossal gold necklace labelling him a "Pussy Magnet". Or the restaurant where everyone is content to eat from the roach- and rat-infested kitchen.
As a murder mystery, it's a wash. The case just isn't that interesting, and even the victim's daughter doesn't seem too torn up he's gone. But as a place to kick back, you could do worse than Bad Monkey. Vaughn has some dry one-liners that will get you, and that mythic hyper-quirkiness of the Sunshine State is irresistible.
The first two episodes of Bad Monkey are available to stream on Apple TV+.
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Previously Deputy TV Editor at Digital Spy and, before that, a TV Reporter at The Mirror, Rebecca can now be found crafting expert analysis of the TV landscape, when she's not talking on the BBC or Times Radio about everything from the latest season of Bridgerton or The White Lotus to whatever chaos is unfolding in the various Love Island villas. When she's not bingeing a boxset, in-the-wild sightings of Rebecca have included stints on the National TV Awards and BAFTAs red carpets, and post-match video explainers of the reality TV we're all watching.
