There’s a monkey in “Unhealthy Monkey,” a brand new miniseries premiering Wednesday on Apple TV+ and primarily based on the guide of the identical title by Carl Hiaasen, however aside from one affectionate chew on an ear and an incapacity — or maybe a refusal — to do methods, it doesn’t do something dangerous.
In reality, the monkey, named Driggs, is sort of lovely. (It’s much less, admittedly, lovely on the web page.) In any case, “Unhealthy Monkey” is a extra arresting title than “Cute Monkey,” and higher suited to a narrative of fraud and homicide underneath a tropical solar.
Set in Hiaasen’s customary South Florida sloshing grounds, with journeys to the Bahamas, it stays largely true to the writer’s genial spirit, following his essential plot, with the standard changes and interpolations, constructing out minor characters and throwing in some anomalous magical realism to melt the blow of one in every of its a number of intertwined story traces. Developed by “Scrubs” creator and “Ted Lasso” co-creator Invoice Lawrence, it’s like three or 4 episodes of an episodic tv collection mashed into one, in a usually tasty, unfussy manner — not a lot a meat and potatoes manufacturing as fried shrimp and beer.
It’s a comedy, largely, with folksy, tall-tale narration by Tom Nowicki and sufficient banter to fill all six “Skinny Man” motion pictures, whose mixed size this 10-episode collection almost equals — although you couldn’t precisely name it banter, because it’s largely laconic chatterbox hero Andrew Yancy (Vince Vaughn) doing the speaking. Yancy is a former police detective within the Florida Keys, on suspension for having used his automobile to push his girlfriend’s husband’s golf cart — together with her husband — into the ocean. Bonnie Witt, performed by Michelle Monaghan, is the girlfriend, an attractive, barely harmful bibliophile whose actual title will not be Bonnie Witt.
Michelle Monaghan stars as Bonnie Witt (or is that her actual title?), one in every of Andrew Yancy’s love pursuits.
(Apple)
Vehicular assault, adultery and his artistic makes an attempt to sabotage the sale of a monstrous yellow spec home subsequent door however, Yancy is 97% a superb man, upright the place it issues, dogged in a manner he can’t assist — the kind of hero who stays no less than outwardly unruffled in any state of affairs and whose firm, within the interesting individual of Vaughn, is unusually enjoyable. Delicate to nature, he enjoys his stunning ocean view and the wildlife that involves his property and greater than as soon as factors out that the streetlights are pink so just-hatched child turtles don’t confuse them with the moon and head away from the ocean reasonably than into it. And he actually hates that massive yellow home.
In the meantime, within the Bahamas, on the island of Andros, younger fisherman Neville Stafford (Ronald Peet, charming), the proprietor of the eponymous monkey, has a parallel downside — the seaside shack his father left him, and during which he could be content material to spend the remainder of his days, is being threatened by the event of a resort. Neville is being extra instantly threatened by the developer’s native thug, Egg (David St. Louis), fully amoral and horrifying however with a beautiful singing voice.
A severed human arm, reeled in by a fishing vacationer, comes into Yancy’s maintaining when the native sheriff duties him with transporting it to the Miami police in hopes that it’ll relieve him of that headache. This brings him into contact with medical expert Rosa Campesino (Natalie Martinez, sparky, spunky), who, you realize and I do know, will find yourself in some kind of relationship with our hero. (They bond over mango popsicles.)
Yancy involves imagine that what appears like an accident — shark? propellor? — could be homicide, particularly after assembly Eve Stripling (Meredith Hagner), the widow of the recognized proprietor of the severed arm. And with no official standing, he units out to research, towing Rosa in his wake, a lot to the exasperated concern of his finest buddy and former companion, Rogelio Burton (John Ortiz), whom Yancy consistently encourages to be extra emotionally expressive.
By way of a lot of twists and turns, Yancy’s quest will result in Andros, the place Eve turns up alongside the resort’s developer, Christopher Grunion (Rob Delaney), and the place Neville, inspired by pals, has turned to the mysterious, imperious lady generally known as the Dragon Queen (Jodie Turner-Smith), a practitioner of Obeah, for magical assist in maintaining his home.
The purported dangerous monkey with Ronald Peet, who performs Neville, a Bahamian who’s making an attempt to cease his land from being developed.
(Apple)
The Bahama scenes, particularly the Dragon Queen’s expanded story — she’s a serious character right here — are tonally distinct from the remainder of the collection. They run nearer to straight drama, formed and powered by Turner-Smith’s commanding efficiency — certainly, hers is the one thread within the collection that is perhaps known as transferring, the remaining being attention-grabbing, amusing, thrilling or enjoyable. As we get nearer to a reckoning, dangerous characters worsen, desperation ramps up the hazard, and there’s a hurricane. However this isn’t the kind of collection that can depart evil unpunished or afflict the great with mindless tragedy. It believes in happiness.
Well-known faces within the massive and universally spectacular forged embody Zach Braff “as you’ve by no means seen him” as a pill-popping Medicare fraudster and Scott Glenn as Jim, Yancy’s spiritually inclined father. Bob Clendenin is humorous as a needy, talkative pilot, and Gonzalo Menendez earns his hisses as a crooked cop. L. Scott Caldwell because the Dragon Queen’s grandmother; Charlotte Lawrence as Eve’s stepdaughter, a Christian hipster; and Nina Grollman, as Madeline, a younger lady on whom Yancy retains a watchful eye after her boyfriend is murdered, all profit from their display time. Alex Moffat performs the glad-handing developer behind the large yellow home; he doesn’t care what occurs to the newborn turtles.
Even the small components, of which there are numerous extra, are greater than normally substantial, as if Lawrence felt it will be unfair to offer any actor too little to do.
What makes “Unhealthy Monkey” particular is that there’s nothing particular about it. It’s just a little wayward at occasions, what with its big forged of characters and myriad plot traces, a few of that are, strictly talking, pointless, however it will get the job performed in a superb old school colourful manner. The place many streaming mysteries make a fetish of favor, depth, sociopolitical relevance and formal novelty, aiming to develop into dialog starters, the dialog round “Unhealthy Monkey” may run merely like this:
“Seen that present ‘Unhealthy Monkey’?”
“Yeah, it’s good.”
“Cool.”
“Cool.”