Bill Lawrence has done it again. The Ted Lasso co-creator has adapted Carl Hiaasen’s comedic mystery Bad Monkey into the perfect vehicle for Vince Vaughn.
Over the last few years writer Bill Lawrence has been on a streak. Apple TV has reaped the benefits of the writer’s co-creations Ted Lasso and Shrinking. They can now happily add Bad Monkey to that list. The series adapted from Florida writer extraordinaire Carl Hiaasen’s novel of the same name is within Lawrence’s oft-kilter humane ensemble comedies. Though with any sort of truly great story taking place in the Sunshine State there’s a massive bite to it – pun intended (wait for it). We can also safely add Vince Vaughn’s “detective” Andrew Yancy to the long line of good-natured albeit humanly flawed leads of Lawrence’s shows.
Through a series of events Andrew Yancy (Vaughn) has been suspended from Florida Keys Sheriff’s Office where he’s a detective. Bouncing around and on edge he’s eager to get back to the business of being a detective rather than his current job as Food Inspector for the Keys. Yancy is offered a chance to get himself into the good graces of the Chief in the Keys. The chance is in the form of a severed arm, his partner Rogelio (John Ortiz) has asked him to drive up to Maimi to pawn off on Maimi-Dade PD. This starts a chain of events for Yancy that involves a bored Corner (Natalie Martinez), a voodoo priestess (Jodie Turner-Smith), a murderous gold digger (Meredith Hagner), a swindled island fisherman (Ronald Peet), the fisherman’s monkey, amongst many other characters that could only tie together in Florida.
The fun of Bad Monkey is the multiple disparate storylines that play out and converge and bounce off one another over the course of the 10-episode series. Like a well-oiled machine, the clockwork of what Lawrence and Company have in store for audiences is too good to spoil. Even if one were to try to spoil Bad Monkey (good luck) the show is complex beyond the twisty plot points and curve balls thrown at a constant clip. There is a wealth of character that overwhelms the entire series. Like the work of Howard Hawks or even Quentin Tarantino, Bad Monkey is a series in which you love to “hang out” with every character no matter how morally compromised they may be. There is a rich complexity to the writing and an understanding that “no one is really bad” and “there are no supporting characters” that run throughout Lawerence’s work especially here.
The cast is uniformly terrific headlined by the amazing Vince Vaughn. Much like how Ted Lasso was a platform for Jason Sudeikis or Shrinking perfectly channeling the grumpy charm of Harrison Ford, Bad Monkey is a laser-tailored fit for Vaughn and his ample star power. The actor here as Yancy the man who cannot let anything go, especially injustices, no matter how small, will be a revelation for those who weren’t ground zero for Wedding Crashers. The actor somehow manages the trick of charming motor-mouth rapscallion and laconic movie star swagger through the entire series but always finds a way to make his co-stars better. There is nothing that Lawrence and Company throw at him that he doesn’t make look as easy as can be (though there is nothing easy about what Vaughn does here).
Vaughn is supported by a who’s who of talented actors. Natalie Martinez and John Ortiz do amazing warm funny work here as the two people who help, sometimes unwittingly, Yancy begin to untangle the mess of a mystery he’s handed. Martinez and Vaughn’s chemistry is off the chart good as both partners in crime and possibly more. The same with Ortiz who plays the long-suffering partner of Yancy, and is more than just the “partner”. Both Meredith Hagner and Jodie Turner-Smith give hilarious and wicked performances as femme fatales with a spin. The biggest surprise of Bad Monkey is the wealth of performances and performers doing excellent work that should be discovered as much as it should be discussed. We haven’t even mentioned the likes of Scott Glenn, Michelle Monaghan, or the SUGAR BEAR hisself Rob Delaney.
Bad Monkey from head to toe a perfectly realized series. One that is best discovered like any good mystery with a minimum of spoilers.