Evil Monkey begins on a beautiful day in Florida on board a honeymoon boat. A few lines of dialogue paint the groom as a repulsive White Lotus-type character, so things go about as well as you’d expect. That is, until he catches up with a severed arm in a disrespectful rigor mortis, and then things get even worse.
This fished-out limb prompts suspended Miami detective Andrew Yancy (Vince Vaughn) to sniff out a murder suspect in the Florida Keys. The Apple TV+ show is based on Carl Hiaasen’s New York Times Bestseller (which book isn’t one?), with a few twists in the Death in Paradise-Style format.
The ten-part film is split between Yancy’s haphazard investigation and a peripheral story about gentrification in the Bahamas, told from the perspective of Neville (Ronald Peet). His slice of paradise, spent fishing and eating his catch, is turned upside down by Rob Delaney’s evil developer, who has bought the land on which Neville’s cabin stands right out from under his nose.
We are led from scene to scene by the show’s hoarse narrator, who is also the captain of the honeymoon charter ship (Tom Nowicki).
The captain sits in the narration booth to steer us between the Keys and the Bahamas, because switching back and forth between the two feels like some all-knowing Apple TV+ boss changing the channel at will. Unfortunately Evil Monkey would be better without that clunky voiceover, which often repeats details we can see for ourselves.
Even the narrator in question admits that the jumping around is “annoying.” But even so, we are told to “be patient,” because how it all fits together remains to be seen, including where the titular monkey (played by Crystal the Monkey, Night at the Museum Fame) comes into play. Whether it’s worth the wait is another question.
Peet’s Neville, with a changeable Bahamian accent, doesn’t quite have the charisma to match Vaughn or Jodie Turner-Smith, who somewhat save this half of the story. She’s clever and ethereal as a sorceress and dragon queen who can curse people. Her Bahamian accent is much better, too.
Back in the Keys, Vaughn plays the sarcastic, affable Joker fans know from the rest of his career, only this time he has his own catchphrase: “f**knuts.” His co-worker at the Miami morgue, Rosa (Natalie Martinez), is a lot of fun, even if the romantic undertones between them aren’t entirely necessary.
Michelle Monaghan is a dud as the disturbed, manic pixie dream girl who occasionally sleeps with Yancy but doesn’t have much impact on the plot. Scrubs Former star of the series, Zach Braff, appears in two of the ten episodes, appropriately as a doctor. Not a particularly good one, though.
The show comes from Scrubs Creator Bill Lawrence, fresh from co-creating Ted Lasso for Apple TV+. Given this show’s firm sense of its feel-good tenor, the sound treatment here is something of an odd mess. Evil Monkey aims for a black comedy and there are funny moments, but there are also moments of tragedy that are clumsily passed over. At one point, a case of underage rape is poorly staged for laughs.
There are some good parts. One episode starts with the instrumental version of 50 Cent’s “PIMP”, which Anatomy of a fall fans, although the overlap in viewership is probably small on the Venn diagram. There’s also plenty of beautiful B-roll to watch, with cameos from darting dolphins.
It’s clear the show had a lot of fun playing with the well-known weirdness of Floridians. There’s Heather with the TV weather report (kudos to BBC Scotland’s Heather Reid and BBC Northwest’s Heather Stott for getting there first), who never gets the weather forecast right but is a joy to behold. Or the sailor with a huge gold chain that marks him as a “pussy magnet.” Or the restaurant where everyone is content to eat out of the cockroach- and rat-infested kitchen.
As a crime thriller, it’s a disappointment. The case is simply not that interesting and even the victim’s daughter doesn’t seem too upset that he’s gone. But as a place to relax, you could find worse things than Evil Monkey. Vaughn has some dry one-liners that will grab you, and the mythical hyper-quirkiness of the Sunshine State is irresistible.
The first two episodes of Evil Monkey can be streamed on Apple TV+.
Deputy TV Editor
Previously TV reporter at The mirrorRebecca now produces expert analyses of the television landscape for Digital Spywhen she is not busy talking on BBC or Times Radio about everything from the last season of Bridgerton or The White Lotus to the chaos that is unfolding in the various Love Island Villas.
When she’s not bingeing TV shows, Rebecca can be seen in the wild on the red carpets of the National TV Awards and BAFTAs, or in post-match explainer videos on the reality TV shows we all watch.
