Pity poor Florida: hurricanes, alligators, drug lords, strip malls, scammers. But Floridians also have Carl Hiaasen, the former Miami Herald reporter who has spun the eccentricities of his home state into a dozen and a half beloved comic crime novels. Now Bill Lawrence, the co-creator of Ted Lasso, has adapted Hiaasen’s novel Bad Monkey into a 10-part Apple TV+ series starring Vince Vaughn, Rob Delaney, and Natalie Martinez, plus lots of shots of glowing Gulf sunsets. Is the series groundbreaking or even especially interesting? Not really. Is it entertaining? Definitely.

Maybe this is also the beginning of a Vince Vaughn-aissance. Best known in the aughts for playing self-absorbed cads in broad comedies such as Old School (2003) and Wedding Crashers (2005), Vaughn did a grittier turn as a criminal on True Detective’s polarizing second season. As far as crime procedurals go, Bad Monkey’s wisecracking protagonist seems like a more natural fit for Vaughn’s vein of garrulous smart-dumb guys. 

Andrew Yancy (Vaughn), whose mouth sometimes outstrips his wisdom or sense of self-preservation, is a former Monroe County sheriff’s detective who was suspended from duty after an unfortunate incident in which he rammed a golf cart containing the wealthy husband of the woman he is casually sleeping with off a pier with his car. He’s broke and reduced to working as a health inspector, busting divey Key West bars for rat-infested kitchens, when his old partner, Rogelio (John Ortiz), persuades him to take on an unusual errand.

A day-tripper on a fishing boat accidentally caught a severed human arm, and Sheriff Sonny Sommers (Todd Allen Durkin), who is protective of the Keys’ tourism-dependent public image, is keen for the arm to become some other jurisdiction’s problem. Yancy agrees to drive the arm, whose middle finger is defiantly extended, to the Miami-Dade County medical examiner for analysis. There he meets an intelligent and attractive assistant coroner, Rosa Campesino (Martinez), who gives him the unwelcome news that the arm doesn’t match any dead bodies. The two decide to investigate. 

Meanwhile, we meet Neville Stafford (Ronald Peet), a young Bahamian man living out a contentedly aimless existence as a Caribbean beach bum. Neville lives in paradise, fishing, drinking, and hanging out all day with his pet monkey, Driggs. He does, that is, until an aggressive white man (Delaney) and his coquettish but dangerous wife (Meredith Hagner) start buying up Neville’s property to build a resort. They arouse Neville’s wrath, plus the ire of an Obeah witch doctor called Dragon Queen (Jodie Turner-Smith), Dragon Queen’s grandmother and mentor Ya-Ya (L. Scott Caldwell), and local tough Egg (David St. Louis). 

The show’s suspense comes in part from the question of how the Florida and Bahamas plotlines will converge. There is also a subplot involving Yancy’s occasional lover, Bonnie (Michelle Monaghan), who turns out to have more of a past than Yancy or anyone else has realized, and cameo appearances by Zach Braff (of Scrubs and Garden State) as a troubled doctor and Scott Glenn (who ought need no introduction) as Yancy’s father.

Some of the show’s choices are slightly puzzling. There is occasional voiceover from an Arrested Development-style narrator (Tom Nowicki), whose interjections seem unnecessary but perhaps help to inject a dash of Hiaasen’s wry authorial voice. Then there is the show’s soundtrack, which has multiple needle-drop moments with songs known from other films or television series, including Dick Dale’s “Miserlou” (best known from Pulp Fiction), the steel-drum instrumental version of 50 Cent’s “P.I.M.P.” (closely associated with the recent film Anatomy of a Fall), and Tom Waits’s “Way Down in the Hole” (used as intro music on The Wire). Are these some kind of winking comment or just incredibly lazy music choices? I couldn’t say. 

I can say that Bad Monkey’s production values are otherwise strong, with lush cinematography taking full advantage of the show’s location shooting. The casting choices and acting, notwithstanding some occasionally shaky Bahamian accents, are also good, even if I wondered if Delaney, a natural comedian, could have been given more room to humor or ham it up. 

Not much here is reinventing the wheel, and there are more than a few clichés, including the obligatory scene where two characters are having a moment of romantic tension but get interrupted by a phone ringing. All in all, though, Bad Monkey has an enjoyably droll sensibility, a sense of pacing, and some clever twists and turns. The show’s climax is a bit underwhelming — but it leaves room for a possible second season, which may, in the end, be more important. 

CLICK HERE TO READ MORE FROM THE WASHINGTON EXAMINER

J. Oliver Conroy’s writing has been published in the Guardian, New York magazine, the Spectator, the New Criterion, and other publications.