TV-MA | 7h 48m | Comedy, Drama, Mystery, Thriller | 2024
On the IMDb.com website, there are over 50 titles described as “comedy thrillers.” Most of them are OK or pretty good, and a dozen are superb. I think these numbers are comparatively small because this is an incredibly difficult genre to pull off with conviction while still being entertaining. Audiences like to laugh and relish a challenging whodunit, just not in the same movie.
Some notable standouts fitting this description include “Get Shorty” (1995), “Jackie Brown” (1997), and “Out of Sight” (1998), not so coincidentally all based on novels by Elmore Leonard.
From 1986 through 2020, the Miami-based writer (and Leonard enthusiast) Carl Hiaasen released 15 comedic thriller novels, and just one of them (“Strip Tease”) was made into a movie. Although it eventually cleared a profit, the 1996 film starring Demi Moore was an unmitigated disaster.
The movie bore little resemblance to the source material, as it tried to condense thickets of character development and subtext into 117 minutes, and it failed on every level. There hasn’t been a Hiaasen crime novel feature-film adaptation produced since then.
Enter Show Runner Lawrence
The show runner on successful TV shows (“Spin City,” “Scrubs,” “Ted Lasso,” and the current “Shrinking”), writer Bill Lawrence was savvy and smart enough to recognize that any Hiaasen crime novel needed far more room to breathe than a feature-film length.
Streaming weekly on Apple TV+ from mid-August through mid-October, the 10-part “Bad Monkey” is the limited series that every die-hard Hiaasen fan has been wanting for dog’s years.
No Spoilers
The best part of reviewing an entire series from a critical perspective is that I don’t have to get close to revealing any specific plot points or tiptoe into spoiler territory. This is the beauty of Hiaasen crime stories. While plot plays a significant role in the bigger picture, all of them are character-driven.Leading the pack of colorful souls is Vince Vaughn as Yancy, a currently suspended Key West detective facing charges for assault. A role that is a custom-glove fit for him, Vaughn turns in a variation (but not a recycled version) of his smooth-talking, lounge-lizard charmer from “Swingers” (1996) and “Wedding Crashers” (2005).
Yancy has an off-and-on-again relationship with Bonnie (Michelle Monaghan). Bonnie is a voracious reader, party-girlish, noncommittal type who flits in and out of his life on mere whims.
In an effort to get back into the good graces of his ultraparanoid police chief, Yancy agrees to transfer an errant body part caught on a recent fishing expedition from the Keys to Miami for possible identification.
The Bahamas
The leads in the Bahamian segments are Neville (Ronald Peet) and Gracie (Jodie Turner-Smith). Neville is a generations-long fisherman content with living hand-to-mouth on the coast in a glorified shack. Gracie is a mysterious mystic who, despite no actual proven skills, captures his heart while simultaneously making him shake in his metaphoric boots.For my money, the most interesting character in the entire series is Meredith Hagner as the opportunistic gold-digger Eve. With a connection to the body part fished out of the water in the opening episode, and a romantic entanglement with a clueless Bahamian developer, she is a perfect, soulless villain.
What I found most impressive with the series was Lawrence’s assignment of creative and direction chores. There are over a dozen credited writers and directors, including Lawrence, yet there is no compromise whatsoever in narrative continuity. Every episode plays out as if it was drafted and realized by the same person.
Do It Again, Please
What I would dearly love is if Lawrence, or someone else, were to take a few other of Hiaasen’s best crime novels (“Double Whammy,” “Tourist Season,” “Skin Tight,” “Stormy Weather”) and give them the same careful, extended treatment as “Bad Monkey.”These are books that are literally begging for long-form adaptation. They require long attention spans, above-room-temperature levels of IQ, and an innate desire to see bad guys getting their due and proper comeuppance.
