‘Bad Monkey’ review: A murder mystery that has a good time

There’s a monkey in “Dangerous Monkey,” a brand new miniseries premiering Wednesday on Apple TV+ and based mostly on the e-book of the identical title by Carl Hiaasen, however other than one affectionate chunk on an ear and an incapacity — or maybe a refusal — to do methods, it doesn’t do something unhealthy.

In truth, the monkey, named Driggs, is sort of lovable. (It’s much less, admittedly, lovable on the web page.) In any case, “Dangerous Monkey” is a extra arresting title than “Lovable Monkey,” and higher suited to a narrative of fraud and homicide beneath a tropical solar.

Set in Hiaasen’s customary South Florida sloshing grounds, with journeys to the Bahamas, it stays principally true to the creator’s genial spirit, following his most important plot, with the same old changes and interpolations, constructing out minor characters and throwing in some anomalous magical realism to melt the blow of one in every of its a number of intertwined story traces. Developed by “Scrubs” creator and “Ted Lasso” co-creator Invoice Lawrence, it’s like three or 4 episodes of an episodic tv sequence mashed into one, in a typically tasty, unfussy manner — not a lot a meat and potatoes manufacturing as fried shrimp and beer.

It’s a comedy, principally, with folksy, tall-tale narration by Tom Nowicki and sufficient banter to fill all six “Skinny Man” motion pictures, whose mixed size this 10-episode sequence almost equals — although you couldn’t precisely name it banter, because it’s principally laconic chatterbox hero Andrew Yancy (Vince Vaughn) doing the speaking. Yancy is a former police detective within the Florida Keys, on suspension for having used his automobile to push his girlfriend’s husband’s golf cart — along with her husband — into the ocean. Bonnie Witt, performed by Michelle Monaghan, is the girlfriend, an attractive, barely harmful bibliophile whose actual title is just not Bonnie Witt.

Vehicular assault, adultery and his inventive makes an attempt to sabotage the sale of a monstrous yellow spec home subsequent door however, Yancy is 97% a superb man, upright the place it issues, dogged in a manner he can’t assist — the kind of hero who stays not less than outwardly unruffled in any scenario and whose firm, within the interesting particular person of Vaughn, is surprisingly stress-free. Delicate to nature, he enjoys his stunning ocean view and the wildlife that involves his property and greater than as soon as factors out that the streetlights are purple so just-hatched child turtles don’t confuse them with the moon and head away from the ocean slightly than into it. And he actually hates that huge yellow home.

In the meantime, within the Bahamas, on the island of Andros, younger fisherman Neville Stafford (Ronald Peet, charming), the proprietor of the eponymous monkey, has a parallel downside — the seaside shack his father left him, and by which he could be content material to spend the remainder of his days, is being threatened by the event of a resort. Neville is being extra instantly threatened by the developer’s native thug, Egg (David St. Louis), utterly amoral and horrifying however with a stunning singing voice.

A severed human arm, reeled in by a fishing vacationer, comes into Yancy’s conserving when the native sheriff duties him with transporting it to the Miami police in hopes that it’s going to relieve him of that headache. This brings him into contact with medical expert Rosa Campesino (Natalie Martinez, sparky, spunky), who, you understand and I do know, will find yourself in some kind of relationship with our hero. (They bond over mango popsicles.)

Yancy involves imagine that what appears to be like like an accident — shark? propellor? — may be homicide, particularly after assembly Eve Stripling (Meredith Hagner), the widow of the recognized proprietor of the severed arm. And with no official standing, he units out to research, towing Rosa in his wake, a lot to the exasperated concern of his greatest good friend and former associate, Rogelio Burton (John Ortiz), whom Yancy always encourages to be extra emotionally expressive.

Via plenty of twists and turns, Yancy’s quest will result in Andros, the place Eve turns up alongside the resort’s developer, Christopher Grunion (Rob Delaney), and the place Neville, inspired by mates, has turned to the mysterious, imperious lady referred to as the Dragon Queen (Jodie Turner-Smith), a practitioner of Obeah, for magical assist in conserving his home.

The purported unhealthy monkey with Ronald Peet, who performs Neville, a Bahamian who’s making an attempt to cease his land from being developed.

(Apple)

The Bahama scenes, particularly the Dragon Queen’s expanded story — she’s a serious character right here — are tonally distinct from the remainder of the sequence. They run nearer to straight drama, formed and powered by Turner-Smith’s commanding efficiency — certainly, hers is the one thread within the sequence that is likely to be known as transferring, the remaining being attention-grabbing, amusing, thrilling or enjoyable. As we get nearer to a reckoning, unhealthy characters worsen, desperation ramps up the hazard, and there’s a hurricane. However this isn’t the kind of sequence that can depart evil unpunished or afflict the great with mindless tragedy. It believes in happiness.

Well-known faces within the giant and universally spectacular solid embrace Zach Braff “as you’ve by no means seen him” as a pill-popping Medicare fraudster and Scott Glenn as Jim, Yancy’s spiritually inclined father. Bob Clendenin is humorous as a needy, talkative pilot, and Gonzalo Menendez earns his hisses as a crooked cop. L. Scott Caldwell because the Dragon Queen’s grandmother; Charlotte Lawrence as Eve’s stepdaughter, a Christian hipster; and Nina Grollman, as Madeline, a younger lady on whom Yancy retains a watchful eye after her boyfriend is murdered, all benefit from their display time. Alex Moffat performs the glad-handing developer behind the massive yellow home; he doesn’t care what occurs to the infant turtles.

Even the small elements, of which there are various extra, are greater than normally substantial, as if Lawrence felt it will be unfair to offer any actor too little to do.

What makes “Dangerous Monkey” particular is that there’s nothing particular about it. It’s slightly wayward at occasions, what with its enormous solid of characters and myriad plot traces, a few of that are, strictly talking, pointless, however it will get the job accomplished in a superb old style colourful manner. The place many streaming mysteries make a fetish of fashion, depth, sociopolitical relevance and formal novelty, aiming to turn out to be dialog starters, the dialog round “Dangerous Monkey” may run merely like this:

“Seen that present ‘Dangerous Monkey’?”

“Yeah, it’s good.”

“Cool.”

“Cool.”