![Vince Vaughn as Andrew Yancy, in episode one of series one of Apple TV+'s Bad Monkey](/https/www.telegraph.co.uk/content/dam/tv/2024/08/12/TELEMMGLPICT000388102098_17234564602810_trans_NvBQzQNjv4BqpVlberWd9EgFPZtcLiMQf0Rf_Wk3V23H2268P_XkPxc.jpeg?imwidth=680)
Bad Monkey, review: Vince Vaughn brings easy, sleazy charm to softboiled Florida crime drama
Based on Carl Hiaasen’s novel, this breezy comedy-drama luxuriates in the Florida sun and Vaughn’s arrogance – but does it need 10 episodes?
![Vince Vaughn as Andrew Yancy, in episode one of series one of Apple TV+'s Bad Monkey](/https/www.telegraph.co.uk/content/dam/tv/2024/08/12/TELEMMGLPICT000388102098_17234564602810_trans_NvBQzQNjv4BqpVlberWd9EgFPZtcLiMQf0Rf_Wk3V23H2268P_XkPxc.jpeg?imwidth=680)
Odd bedfellows come in all shapes and sizes but Death in Paradise slipping between the sheets with pulp fiction king Mickey Spillane? That’s up there with the oddest, yet that’s where we are with Bad Monkey (Apple TV+), a corpse-filled Florida-set crime thriller where life is cheap and the laughs even cheaper.
Based on Carl Hiaasen’s cult 2013 novel, Bad Monkey sets up the tallest of tall stories, so it’s easy to see what attracted 6’6’’ Vince Vaughn to the part of disgraced detective Andrew Yancy, a glibly charming motormouth with a sharp line in one-liners and a dogged determination to bring the bad guys to justice when all around are telling him not to bother.
Stripped of his badge for driving his lover’s husband into the water off a Florida Keys jetty – don’t think gritty, this is a moment of comedy – Yancy needs redemption in order to get his job back, redemption he finds in the shape of a severed arm fished out of the ocean. A severed arm with its middle finger raised no less. Suspicion soon points at the less than grieving widow who pitches up for the insurance cheque, and the game is on.
Feverishly hopping back and forth between the Keys and the Bahamas, Hiaasen’s favourite themes of environmental vandalism, political corruption and spiritual awakening wrestle, often a touch uneasily, with a hero who – as noted by all around him – talks way too much and a tone that bounces between film noir and cop-chase comedy. But there’s a page turner quality to Bad Monkey – and, yes, there is a monkey in it, wearing a nappy – that keeps you hanging in there.
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Cover versions of Tom Petty tunes – a major plus – pepper the soundtrack, signposting the twists and episodic cliffhangers (Running Down a Dream, Stop Dragging My Heart Around… you get the picture) as cartoon villainess Eve Stripling (a nice line in cheerleader-style sociopathy from Meredith Hagner) wreaks fatal havoc. There are enjoyable turns too from Rob Delaney and Zach Braff as pawns in Eve’s game, and Jodie Turner-Smith as a Bahamian mistress of the dark arts known as the Dragon Queen.
But how much you’ll enjoy Bad Monkey rather hangs on how much you fall for Vaughn’s carefully cultivated, trademark self-deprecating arrogance. It’s a persona that’s perfectly fitted to Yancy’s ability to train-wreck his own life while heroically pursuing the villains of the piece and charming the cynical local mortician (Natalie Martinez, a sparky love interest), while cracking the hammiest jokes the multitude of scriptwriters can throw at him.
The skinny, barely plausible story feels overstretched at 10 episodes and the energy ebbs away in a closing episode in which loose ends are not so much tied up as scrunched into a ball of paper and tossed into the nearest wastebasket. But as a character piece that serves up a snapshot of eccentric Florida life, Bad Monkey is a tale slips down as easily as a sundowner on a moonlit beach.
The first two episodes of Bad Monkey are available on Apple TV+ from Wednesday 14 August; one episode each Wednesday thereafter