In the comic crime series, Vince Vaughn plays a chattering detective

After driving a guy and his golf cart off a pier, a police detective named Yancy in the Florida Keys is demoted to restaurant inspector. It's a pretty sarcastic premise, although I'm not sure how it works (aren't they different departments?), but in Apple TV+'s “Bad Monkey,” starring Vince Vaughn, Yancy is drawn back into police work when some tourists deep-sea fishing pull a disembodied human arm ashore. “We're in the memory-making business,” shrugs their grizzled captain.

Based on the 2013 comic crime thriller by Carl Hiaasen, the series hails from Bill Lawrence, known for Scrubs and more recently for Apple on Ted Lasso and Shrinking. Lawrence has a tendency to get cheesy in a way that I find emotionally dishonest – the men at the center of his shows, including this one, are often petty but good-hearted, and we're meant to adore them for it. But tonally, the 10-episode season of Bad Monkey aims for something different and better.

Yancy is the quick-witted, easy-going loner you often find in the novels of Thomas Pynchon or Elmore Leonard, with endless confidence but not always the best judgement. The kind of guy who doesn't follow the rules but somehow still gets the bad guys. That's a promising starting point.

The show works, for the most part, but I would like it a lot more if it starred someone other than Vaughn. He doesn't embody a specific character so much as he plays a version of his hackneyed personality, with a superficial, fast-talking babble but little else to suggest there's a human being behind all the bluster. Behind his eyes, he's expressionless.

Audiences will likely gravitate towards the show either way. While there is an abundance of TV shows thanks to streaming, the overall quality has plummeted. I think at this point, viewers are just grateful for anything that is halfway competent, entertaining, and the kind of easy viewing that doesn't insult their intelligence.

So what about the arm that was pulled out of the water in the Keys? Yancy is tasked with bringing it to Miami and hopefully turning the case over to the good folks of Dade County. But not before buying some popsicles and fresh crabs and throwing them in the cooler along with the arm. At the morgue, he meets medical examiner Rosa (Natalie Martinez), who will eventually join him on the case (and sleep with him, too). If only there were a little spark between them, but their chemistry remains theoretical.

A parallel storyline takes place in the Bahamas, where a young fisherman named Neville (Ronald Peet) and his pet capuchin monkey (who is neither evil nor good, just there) live a simple and idyllic life in a beach hut left to Neville by his father. It turns out that the land has been sold under his nose, and the humble abode is being demolished when a couple of unsavory American developers (Meredith Hagner and Rob Delaney) arrive to build a resort. They are also – surprise! – connected to this mysterious arm.

To thwart their plans, Neville seeks the services of a priestess named Dragon Queen (Jodie Turner-Smith), who is suffering from a crisis of confidence and just wants to get off the island. Her story takes a while to get going – it comes awfully close to exoticizing the character at first – but it becomes the show's most powerful narrative, particularly in her volatile relationship with her grandmother (a great L. Scott Caldwell). Turner-Smith's career has been disappointing so far, but when she's given the chance to be vulnerable here, she's pretty good.

Eventually, Yancy and Rosa head to the Bahamas, where the storylines finally intersect. An unseen narrator guides us through it all – sample voiceover: “(She) knew she might get a UTI from having sex in the hot tub, but she still thought it was worth it” – which gives the show a lighthearted energy and personality it otherwise lacks. There's also a brief but welcome appearance from Scott Glenn, who does a great job of enhancing the role of Yancy's extraordinarily laid-back father.

The show is basically a portrait of cheap con artists and oddballs who lack any moral compass or even conscience. The setting is a fantasy in itself, considering the Florida Keys are ground zero for sea level rise in Florida. But maybe that's too bad for “Bad Monkey” to acknowledge. The sleazy people are happy to be tackled. But the climate crisis? As if!

———

'EVIL MONKEY'

2.5 stars (out of 4)

Rating: TV-MA

How to watch: Apple TV+

———