“Cowboy Cartel,” a four-part documentary arriving Friday on Apple TV+, traces the wild saga of a Mexican drug cartel’s money-laundering scheme through the racehorse market and the FBI agents and journalists who unraveled it. The plot feels ready-made for a TV show, and “Cowboy” sometimes rises to the occasion.

The story has all the makings: a determined rookie FBI agent, a jazzy IRS dude, a starchy state attorney, well-sourced reporters, mountains of money, wise horse people and a ruthless, blood-soaked cartel. “Cowboy” is admirably lucid about the ins and outs of money laundering, and it nimbly anticipates all the “is everything a criminal does a crime?” arguments a skeptical viewer or defense lawyer may have.

Muddy technique adulterates this appealing clarity of thought. B-roll of Texas highways does not illuminate anything, and more egregious is the use of hazy reenactments. Here it isn’t (just) banality that irks. It’s that the show is repressing itself, as if in its heart of hearts it wanted to be a spinoff of “Narcos” but had to be a lower-budget documentary instead. It’s the person in the business whose dreams of the stage were denied and who now finds an awful lot of opportunities to turn presentations into song-and-dance numbers. Me? Sing? I couldn’t possib — well, maybe just this once.

The blending of self-aware nonfiction with imprecise, borderline goofy re-creations here makes true things feel faker. I can see with my own eyes that the guy in the re-creation looks nothing like the guy he’s portraying; am I meant to believe the inanity written on his white board was on a real white board? Flabby scripted dialogue offers so little, especially when the colorful, actual anecdotes offer so much.

“Cowboy Cartel” and the talking heads featured in it know they are in conversation not only with the cultural mythologies of the glamours of crime but also with crime fiction in general. Our wholesome FBI agent solemnly describes one of the captured and convicted cartel bosses as “my Hannibal Lecter,” and other people lament the public’s lack of understanding about the true depravity of cartels. The real goings-on here — the real losses, the genuine conflict, the poignant asides — are enough.