Why Vince Vaughn's Bad Monkey should kickstart the 'Vaughnaissance'

But the funnyman has recently shown signs of getting back to his best. He clearly had a blast inhabiting the mind of a teenage cheerleader in the body of a middle-aged serial killer in Freaky. Likewise, with his cameos as Marty's half-brother Freddy Funkhouser in Curb Your Enthusiasm, and now in Apple TV+'s slickly produced original, Vaughn has rediscovered the easygoing charm and acerbic wit of his imperial phase.

Bad Monkey stars Vaughn as Andrew Yancy, a "simple man of simple pleasures", who's been demoted from police detective to restaurant health inspector, having deliberately bumped his lover's golfcart-driving husband into the waters of the Florida Keys.

Desperate for some respite from rat-infested kitchens, the fallen cop – against the advice of his superiors – soon becomes invested in the archipelago's latest unsolved mystery: a severed arm reeled in by a tourist boat.

Adapted from the same-named 2013 novel by Carl Hiaasen, the 10-part series throws in an array of oddballs as the puzzle develops into a full-blown conspiracy involving everything from insurance fraud to gentrification. There's the scheming socialite who seems oddly unmoved about her husband's apparent grisly demise; there's the Bahamian fisherman determined to seek vengeance for the demolition of his family's beachside home; and then there's the local voodoo queen who takes a shine to the latter's Capuchin monkey.

The titular creature, as you'd expect, steals the show, although he's run a close second by Vaughn's pitch-perfect performance as a man whose demeanour doesn't always reflect his sunshine surroundings.

"He felt that warm glow whenever he made an enemy for life," explains the show's gruff-voiced narrator. And the sleuth makes plenty, whether it's the property developer whose latest fixer-upper has invaded his own personal paradise ("I can still smell that dead raccoon. Or maybe it's just the odour from the way the house looks?") or the self-proclaimed 'P***y Hunter' whose ghoulish catch might not have been as accidental as first seemed ("How does an unemployed halfwit like you get the bank to buy bling and oysters").

Showrunner Bill Lawrence, fast becoming Apple TV+'s secret weapon having also created the pandemic's ultimate comfort watch Ted Lasso and Harrison Ford's comedic return Shrinking, has acknowledged – and given his blessing to – the fact most of these quick-witted quips were made off the cuff.

"Watching him doing that up-close and making stuff that we wrote better, it was a pleasure," he told Entertainment Tonight.

Of course, you could argue the over-reliance on improvisation ultimately sparked the downfall of Vaughn's brand of comedy (The Dilemma and the equally bloated Anchorman 2 clocked in at the two-hour mark). Thankfully here, his one-liners are deployed sparingly, ensuring Bad Monkey stays relatively faithful to Hiaasen's pulp fiction while still developing a cynical flavour of its own.

Indeed, this isn't quite the Vaughn of Old School, Dodgeball and Wedding Crashers, the kind of R-rated comedies he recently bemoaned Tinseltown bosses are now scared to make in an IP-driven landscape (the irony that his latest project is based on a New York Times bestseller isn’t lost).

He's 20 years older, for one thing, and the humour is more likely to make you smile than laugh out loud. But with such naturally funny bones, he still makes the majority of the script zing.

Vaughn also gets to show the more smooth-talking side he displayed in breakout hit Swingers, wining and dining Michelle Monaghan's Bonnie, an on-the-run figure who continually drifts in and out of his life, back into bed. He has more chemistry with Natalie Martinez's Rosa, the local medical examiner who also relishes the opportunity to escape her day job, even when it puts her own life in danger.

Yet, his most engaging rapport is with Rogelio (John Ortiz), the world-weary best friend and former colleague who fulfils the role typically occupied by the likes of Owen Wilson. It's a shame the show doesn't utilise their sparring abilities – with Yancy's unwillingness to play by the rules usually the catalyst – more often.

It should be noted that Apple TV+ does have a bizarre habit of making big-name marquee shows before burying them without any promotion (see Natalie Portman's Lady in the Lake, Michael Douglas's Franklin and the ridiculously star-studded Extrapolations).

But if they do actually make the general public aware Bad Monkey exists, then by the time his future projects emerge (the Al Pacino-starring Easy's Waltz, the long-awaited Dodgeball sequel), the 'Vaughnaissance' should already be in full swing.

The first two episodes of Bad Monkey are available to stream on Apple TV+ from Aug 14 with a new episode following every Wednesday until October 9 – check out our Drama hub for all the latest news.

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