Apple TV+’s new Bad Monkey is one of the biggest TV shows on all of streaming right now — the actual biggest, by one measure — and, honestly, it doesn’t surprise me a bit.
Bad Monkey is kind of like the Florida Man of TV shows. It’s unique. It’s completely over the top. It’s as if sun-baked coastal excess was repackaged into the format of a TV show, complete with bright splashes of tropical color, wacky characters, and a motormouthed protagonist who could only exist in the Sunshine State. You watch a show like this for the same reason a person visits Palm Beach — for the vibes, baby! (okay, and maybe those waterfront views, too).
The new Apple show, based on Carl Hiaasen’s 2013 novel of the same name, stars Vince Vaughn as Andrew Yancy, a former Miami police detective who now works as a health inspector in the Florida Keys after pissing off the wrong people. Just to give you an idea of what a, let’s say, colorful show this is — it opens with a tourist fisherman discovering a severed arm floating in the water, the middle finger of which is still hilariously extended thanks to some bizarre rigor mortis. You only have to wait a few episodes to find out who the arm belonged to, but … yeah.
According to the streaming search engine Reelgood, Bad Monkey is the #1 show across all of streaming this week. “Two episodes through, consider me a big fan of Apple TV’s Bad Monkey,” raved @CinemaTweets1 on X/Twitter. “Between Sugar, Presumed Innocent, and now Bad Monkey, Apple’s been dishing out high quality shows throughout 2024.”
Indeed. Moreover, the show is currently sitting at a 75% audience score on Rotten Tomatoes, and a 92% critics’ score, which is not bad at all for creator Bill Lawrence’s third Apple TV+ series (after Ted Lasso and Shrinking). Reelgood, by the way, monitors 20 million viewing decisions each month across every streaming platform in the US, from Apple TV+ to Max, Disney+, Hulu, Netflix, Prime Video, Paramount+ and more.
For the 7-day period that ended on Aug. 21, the 10 TV shows that topped Reelgood’s latest weekly ranking are as follows:
- Bad Monkey (Apple TV+)
- The Umbrella Academy (Netflix)
- Industry (HBO/Max)
- The Bear (FX/Hulu)
- From (Prime Video)
- Presumed Innocent (Apple TV+)
- Emily in Paris (Netflix)
- Time Bandits (Apple TV+)
- A Good Girl’s Guide to Murder (Netflix)
- Evil (Paramount+)
I’ve got to say: As outlandish as Bad Monkey is, it’s super-entertaining. This shouldn’t come as a surprise, given that Lawrence’s TV output over the course of his career (going all the way back to NBC’s Scrubs) is among the most consistently enjoyable fare that I’ve ever encountered from a TV creator.
As of this writing, three of Bad Monkey’s 10 episodes are now streaming on Apple TV+. Meanwhile, if you want to go deeper on some of the other TV shows that are particularly hot right now, you can check out our past coverage of several other titles on Reelgood’s latest ranking — including The Umbrella Academy, Industry, The Bear, Presumed Innocent, Emily in Paris, and A Good Girl’s Guide to Murder.
