Most Apple TV+ shows are cut from the same plain cloth. They tend to have massive budgets, A-list actors and competent storytelling, but, with a handful of exceptions (Severance, Slow Horses, Sunny, basically all the S’s) they also tend to be relatively forgettable. Fine, entertaining even, but somehow flimsy and fleeting, too. Like the electronic products that made the company’s fortune, it’s all smooth lines and clean corners, which is good for laptops and phones. But when it comes to TV, Apple’s output has often erred on the side of caution.
So it is again with Bad Monkey, which stars Vince Vaughn as Andrew Yancy, a disgraced detective unofficially working a case in the Florida Keys. Yancy is off the job after assaulting his lover’s dodgy husband by ramming his golf cart into the water. Even though he’s been suspended from the job he clearly loves, bloke’s bloke Yancy is happy at home. He enjoys simple pleasures, such as playfully trying to stop the sale of the megamansion next door to his modest house, and having a nice drink on his sunlounger while staring out at the waves.
But the calm waters of his life are interrupted when a severed arm arrives on his doorstep. It was pulled out of the Keys by a honeymooner chartering a fishing boat, who got more than the marlin he was banking on. Yancy’s ex-partner in policing, Rogelio (John Ortiz), arrives with this unwanted gift. Nobody will take on the arm or the associated paperwork. The police don’t want it, the morgue doesn’t want it. Yancy’s job is ostensibly one of safe-keeping, but Rogelio knows that it is also a kind of bait to lure him back into detective work. After a wild goose chase, in which Yancy attempts to fob it off on a spirited Miami forensic pathologist who claims not to fancy him (wink wink, I’m sure that won’t change at all), he sticks it in his freezer.
You know what they say about recently suspended cops: dangle a severed arm in front of them, and they’re like a dog with a collar bone. “To get his job back, all Yancy had to do was stay out of trouble,” says the narrator. Naturally, Yancy is drawn to the mystery like a moth to a limb-shaped flame. Was it a shark attack? Or something more malign? Why does the alleged arm-owner’s widow Eve (Search Party’s Meredith Hagner) seem strangely unbothered by her husband’s recent detachment? What does the victim’s daughter’s cult-like church have to do with anything? Isn’t Rob Delaney’s moustache impressive?
Meanwhile, over in the Bahamas, Neville (Ronald Peet) and his pet monkey Driggs – the bad monkey of the title – are similarly laid-back types, and their easy life is about to be bulldozed by the arrival of US property developers who want to raze Neville’s cottage and build a five-star resort in its place. The narrator apologises for the confusion caused by cutting between two storylines, and it isn’t until the end of the first episode that he informs us that yes, the two stories are connected, as if this is a big twist. I don’t feel that this is a spoiler, because Eve has already appeared in the worlds of Yancy and Neville, which are quite obviously connected. It doesn’t take a detective of Yancy-level insight to work that one out.
Bad Monkey was created by Scrubs and Ted Lasso creator Bill Lawrence, who is also behind Shrinking, another show which proves the theory that all the best Apple series must begin with an S. It is a decent, solid, largely amiable pulpy comedy-mystery, in which the underdog gets to fight back. Whether that’s Neville protecting his home or Yancy fighting for the right to get detective work done properly, even if he has to cut a few legal corners, this pits the small guy against the big guns, figuratively and literally. By the end of the second episode, it starts to find a bit more character. In the Bahamas, there is a Dragon Queen, called upon to curse the property developer making Neville’s life a misery. There are femme fatales and drive-by shootings, and all the while, Vaughn ambles along on his bicycle, calling out characters with names like Pussy Magnet. It’s fun, it’s light, and it makes you want to go on holiday. Still, with Vince Vaughn and all that Apple clout, you might expect something just a touch more magical.
• Bad Monkey is on Apple TV+
