There is a monkey in “Bad Monkey,” a new miniseries premiering Wednesday on Apple TV+ and based on the book of the same name by Carl Hiaasen , but apart from one affectionate bite on an ear and an inability — or perhaps a refusal — to do tricks, it doesn’t do anything bad. In fact, the monkey, named Driggs, is quite adorable. (It is less, admittedly, adorable on the page.
) In any case, “Bad Monkey” is a more arresting title than “Adorable Monkey,” and better suited to a story of fraud and murder under a tropical sun. Set in Hiaasen’s customary South Florida sloshing grounds, with trips to the Bahamas, it stays mostly true to the author’s genial spirit, following his main plot, with the usual adjustments and interpolations, building out minor characters and throwing in some anomalous magical realism to soften the blow of one of its several intertwined story lines. Developed by “Scrubs” creator and “Ted Lasso” co-creator Bill Lawrence , it’s like three or four episodes of an episodic television series mashed into one, in a generally tasty, unfussy way — not so much a meat and potatoes production as fried shrimp and beer.
It’s a comedy, mostly, with folksy, tall-tale narration by Tom Nowicki and enough banter to fill all six “Thin Man” movies, whose combined length this 10-episode series nearly equals — though you couldn’t exactly call it banter, as it’s mostly laconic chatterbox hero Andrew Yancy ( Vince Vaughn ) doing the talking. .