‘Bad Monkey’ Is the Goofy, Thrilling Beach Read of Prestige TV

A down-on-his-luck detective with a fizzled love life, freshly suspended from work with no clear prospects. A father in the thrall of a vindictive Lady Macbeth type, driving him to ever darker depths. A local community pushed to the margins by moneyed developers. Characters reeling from addiction and poverty amid a dizzying spree of violent crime.

In this era of prestige TV, Bad Monkey, whose first two episodes debut on Apple TV+ on Wednesday, could have been yet another bleak downer. Fortunately for all of us, in the hands of showrunner Bill Lawrence and Vince Vaughn, who stars as detective Andrew Yancy, it’s anything but—it’s a rollicking, darkly hilarious series that’s both compulsively watchable and plain old fun. In the dog days of summer, Bad Monkey offers up the TV equivalent of that most hallowed vacation tradition: the beach read.

Based on the 2013 book of the same name by author and journalist Carl Hiaasen, the ur-chronicler of Florida Men, Bad Monkey follows Yancy as he works to solve a case that begins with an inauspicious omen: a severed arm that is hooked by pleasure boaters off the Keys. Misfits and oddballs abound, with a cast that includes Rob Delaney, Zach Braff, Michelle Monaghan, and Jodie Turner-Smith. There are Hawaiian shirts and rum aplenty—and, oh yeah, murder.

“I’m a fan of Carl’s books, and he has that great quality where you’re taking the case seriously, but the characters are odd and their points of view are fun and interesting,” Vaughn, who is also an executive producer for the show, tells The Ringer. “It’s comedic for sure, but I think that the engine of it is this real crime.”

For Lawrence, who cocreated Ted Lasso and Shrinking, it’s the latest entry in a career dominated by series that seem all but allergic to the heavy, stressful tone that dominates many of today’s most celebrated shows. “I love The Bear and Succession,” Lawrence says. “But what people aren’t making and that I used to love is that big summertime movie. You think you’ve just watched a banter-driven comedy like Beverly Hills Cop or 48 Hrs., but underneath it all, there’s some pathos and some humanity.”

Before Ted Lasso, Lawrence was best known for creating Scrubs, the aughts medical sitcom whose whimsy and unabashed weirdness made it something like the anti–Grey’s Anatomy. Lawrence, who first began reading Hiaasen’s books as a teenager, originally wrote the Bad Monkey script seven years ago, but he wasn’t able to get the project off the ground. That changed with the explosive success of Ted Lasso; its debut season racked up 20 Emmy nominations and, along with the second season, won the Emmy for Outstanding Comedy Series. “When things went well for me and we were lucky enough to have Ted Lasso, I was able to go to my partners and go, ‘Hey, I’d love to make this thing that I’ve been trying to make forever,’” Lawrence says. “And they let me do it because they’re nuts.”

Bad Monkey’s best moments are when Vaughn riffs on, and with, the kooks he finds himself surrounded by—a glorious return to the fast-talking, super-dry humor that made movies like Wedding Crashers and The Break-Up hits. “Working with Vince, you get Vince Vaughn,” says Natalie Martinez, who plays Rosa Campesino, a coroner who joins forces with Yancy. “I think one of the most beautiful things about him and what makes him so brilliant is that he’s able to bring that and just amplify it when he’s on-screen.”

Martinez serves as the series’ straight man and Vaughn’s frequent foil, one of perhaps two characters in the entire series you can imagine asking to water your plants while you’re out of town. Bad Monkey represents the actor’s first foray into comedy. “Being a Bill Lawrence show, it kind of matched my humor, because he has this really beautiful balance of finding humor in crazy situations,” she says. “You know, you can have that drama and then find humor, which brings a really good balance in that dramedy genre.”

Vaughn agrees, noting that it’s a tricky balance—especially in a series with a body count as high as Bad Monkey’s. “I haven’t seen so many things that can pull off as well as this does, where it’s telling you to laugh and to have fun with it, and it’s entertaining, but it also raises questions and is suspenseful,” he says. The darkness is a key part of the recipe, he adds: “I like that this isn’t try-hard.”

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In their 20s, Lawrence and Vaughn were part of the same regular poker game. “It was just a game of a bunch of goofballs that were trying to find their way out in Los Angeles, acting, comics, writers, whatever,” Lawrence says. One night, Lawrence folded early on a hand and, as a result, was tasked with going to the door and paying when the Domino’s delivery guy turned up. Vaughn remained in the game. “As I was paying the guy, from the background, Vince was like, ‘Bill, does he have a sparkle in his eyes? Bill, does he like musical theater? Bill, does he want to come in and talk about books?’”

Smash cut to a year and a half later, when Lawrence went to see Swingers, the 1996 movie that first catapulted Vaughn to stardom, in theaters. In the movie, Vaughn and pals are lounging around an apartment when a deliveryman arrives—and as Jon Favreau’s hangdog comedian character trudges to the door, Vaughn launches into a monologue from the other room: “Mikey, is he cute? See if he’d like to come in and join us for a cocktail, Michael. Michael, is he polite? If he’s polite, have him come in. Michael, if he’s polite, let him in. Is he clean? Have him come look. Have him take off his shoes. Michael, is he clean? I want to see him. Michael, I want to see him. Don’t let him go!”

“Vince obviously did that all the time to torture his friends,” Lawrence says he realized. “It’s why he has always been stuck in my head, comedically.”

For Lawrence, Hiaasen’s oeuvre, which encompasses some 15 crime novels set in the Sunshine State, was a formative influence on his own work. “It’s no coincidence—you can draw a straight line from his surreal satire and bigger-than-life characters to the fantasy, weird, cerebral, surreal life of Scrubs,” he says. “But no one’s ever able to condense his stuff to 90 minutes.” Indeed, past attempts to adapt Hiaasen’s books into films have floundered: 1996’s Striptease, whose source text was a bestseller, was widely panned, eventually picking up six Golden Raspberry Awards.

Lawrence believes that streaming just might be the answer. “I think streaming has opened the doors to some of these great books that you can make a self-contained story in,” he says, adding that he’s acquired the rights to Bad Monkey’s 2016 sequel, Razor Girl. “I would do a Carl Hiaasen–verse tomorrow. Vince and I are desperate to keep this going.”

If he has any regrets, they’re over the titular monkey, whose real name is Crystal and who wasn’t bad at all. “The only thing was the monkey was badly miscast because it’s a very good monkey,” Lawrence says. “It’s supposed to be a bad monkey. It’s supposed to be dangerous and bitey and gross. Instead, it was sweet and loves to eat grapes and was a pleasure to have on set. I wish I could do jokes about the monkey being a diva, but it’s probably one of the easier experiences I’ve had working with an actress.”

For the record: The diaper that Crystal wears throughout the series was out of fidelity to Hiaasen’s novel, not for any specific primate needs.

“I don’t think Crystal loved it, but she’s willing to do things for character,” Lawrence says.