Hundreds of years from now, long after the hurricanes and rising sea levels have rid every beachfront of every condominium and returned the state to the tropical Eden it once was, whatever sentient lifeforms that prevail may dig through the moss-shadowed ruins in search of historical artifacts: The evidence of our civilization’s astonishments, the tracks of our tears, the arc of our ambitions—all to understand who we were when we lived in the world.

I’m not certain what artifacts of significance will survive to puzzle or inspire these future archeologists, but I feel secure in believing that Florida Man will make the cut. Symbolic of all that is gobsmackingly insane about life in the Sunshine State, this “avatar of untempered gonzo,” as I once described him (or her, as Florida Woman also makes the headlines), was summoned into being by news reports that began with the soon-to-be loaded phrase “Florida man,” typically followed by the most mind-altering, perverse details of human behavior gone impossibly wrong. This is all one of the wonderful, yet unexpected, benefits of Florida’s Sunshine Law, which makes police reports handily available to news outlets—the most lurid of them noisily signal-boosted by the explosion of social media—which first christened #FloridaMan as a meme in 2013. 

Honestly, though, it felt like Florida Man had fallen from online prominence since the pandemic. Maybe we’d reached maximum crazy. Maybe he couldn’t get the hack of TikTok or Brat Summer. But just when you thought the phenomenon might have reached its sell-by date, HBO Max swoops in with the new series, “It’s Florida, Man.” Not to be confused with the Netflix comedy-drama “Florida Man” (which is shot in Wilmington, N.C.), the new Friday night series seems perfectly designed for beer-fueled sports bar viewing or sunken sofa chill sessions surrounded by boxes of half-eaten pizza and a smoking bong. Each episode is a tight, 24-minute recreation of a classic Florida Man news story, featuring an all-star cast of actors—Jake Johnson, Anna Faris, Juliette Lewis and Simon Rex among them—who bring to life, with very broad strokes, outlandish scenarios that are “sort of” true. 

That hedge feels particularly necessary from the very first episode, which stars Sam Richardson (“Veep”) as a hardcore fan of the electronic music producer and performer Bassnectar. Strapped for cash but obsessed with going to a concert in Colorado, he advertises on Craigslist that he will do anything for money. He’s shocked at what he’s asked to do—no spoilers, but the episode’s title, “Toes,” is a hint—and even more shocked that he’s willing to go through with it. The fun part comes as the reenactments are narrated by the real-life subjects, who recount their version of events before the screen flashes back to the actor portraying them.

Episode two is equally as out there, but truer to a classic Florida trope. As viewers will immediately notice when they meet the real-life Eric Merda, he is missing his right arm. It was snatched off of him by an alligator after Merda, who was killing time around a swamp outside Sarasota, took a very ill-advised plunge into the waters. “The gator took off wagging his tail,” Merda testifies to the camera, selling the moment with unabashed, child-like enthusiasm, “and a smile on his face. Just like a little chihuahua.”

Merda, a wiry character with an engaging sense of wonder, revisits what should be a traumatic occasion with an air of transcendental reverie. It was four days and three nights that he lay naked in the swamp, covered in mud, before he was discovered by someone (a Good Samaritan who also appears in the episode, lamenting, with a laugh, Merda’s lack of clothing when they met). “I’m part of the swamp,” this Florida Man says, convinced somehow that the gator was sent by his late mother’s spirit to get him back on the right track in life. “The swamp’s part of me now.” 

It’s fun to watch Simon Rex (star of Sean Baker’s “Red Rocket”) reenact the reptile attack and its redemptive aftermath in a mostly wordless performance, but Merda steals his own episode, not just with his dramatic flair for storytelling but his genuine passion for life. 

Executively produced by Danny McBride (“Eastbound and Down,” “The Righteous Gemstones”), the show’s predictable template could begin to feel canned or corny, but the weekly premises only look to become wilder.