Travelling salesman Bunny Munro (Matt Smith) takes his son (Rafael Mathé) around Sussex following the death of his wife Libby (Sarah Greene). And while Bunny’s grief and his addictions threaten to derail their road trip entirely, a serial killer dressed as the devil makes his own way down to Brighton…
Streaming on: NOW/Sky TV
Episodes viewed: 6 of 6
With a title like that, you might think you know exactly where this story is heading. But like the snake-oil salesman at its heart, Sky’s adaptation of Nick Cave’s novel The Death Of Bunny Munro is a slippery, off-kilter beast.
The funeral of Libby (Sarah Greene) early on sets the tone, when Bunny Munro Sr (Matt Smith) does at least two unspeakable things at his wife’s burial, before setting off on a booze-fuelled road trip with his son (Rafael Mathé), Bunny Jr, in tow. Big Bunny is all charm, lying through his teeth to everyone he meets, desperate to sell hokey cosmetics and promiscuously have his way with England’s entire south coast. Those boyish looks and electric smile soon falter, though, as Bunny’s world begins to unravel.
Bunny is vastly unlikeable from the get-go, deliberately so, yet Smith keeps us on side regardless. The former Doctor Who twists that flailing magnetism he once wielded as a Time Lord, weaponising it here against a world that has no place for a man like Bunny. Watching Smith pinball between disturbing sexual encounters and strained moments of fatherhood is relentlessly tough to watch, but there’s still a believable chemistry between him and newcomer Mathé that grounds the story just as it almost wheels out of control completely.
Sweet, ghostly scenes between them and Sarah Greene as Bunny’s dead mother hurt to watch, bringing some much-needed tenderness, shot by director Isabella Eklöf with an ethereal warmth. Less warm are the sunny yet bleak shots of coastal England, imagery that deconstructs the idyllic falsehoods intrinsic to life in a seaside town.
Reality frays when the seemingly incongruous serial killer side-story intertwines with Bunny’s journey directly. As the end encroaches, the plot gives way to something moodier, more raw, with a sonic backdrop of indie gems and a score sculpted by Cave himself (alongside longtime collaborator Warren Ellis). The result is a Faustian descent into the cyclical horrors of broken fatherhood that’s as mesmerising and unpredictable to watch as it is hard to bear.
If you can stomach it, Matt Smith’s deranged, thoroughly unhinged performance will take you to hell and back. One of the year’s most uncomfortable — yet brilliant — watches.
