He left it late but Matt Smith just delivered one of the TV performances of the year. As the titular antihero in The Death Of Bunny Munro (Sky Atlantic), Smith scorches the screen with his cocky swagger and roguish charisma, thinly papering over the pain that lies beneath.
The camera lingers on Smith’s expressive Easter Island statue face as runs the gamut of emotions, from twinkling humour to murderous rage, from boyish excitement to the depths of despair. The camera lingers almost as much on his bare backside, which is seen so much that it deserves its own appearance fees. Well, as Bunny boasts: "Mine is a truly magnificent arse.”
Adapted from Nick Cave’s gleefully transgressive 2009 novel by writer Pete Jackson (who won a BAFTA for Somewhere Boy), the six-parter is reminiscent of Trainspotting meets About A Boy. Following his wife Libby’s suicide, sex-addicted cosmetics salesman Bunny (Matt Smith) finds himself saddled with his nerdy nine-year-old son, Bunny Junior (a quietly tender turn from newcomer Rafael Mathé).
As the mismatched pair deal with their grief in wildly contrasting ways, Bunny takes Junior on an increasingly chaotic road trip around Brighton and the surrounding coast. It invariably involves the boy waiting in the car while his priapic father beds another bored housewife. All floppy quiff, chain-smoked Lambert & Butlers and whisky from the bottle, Bunny gets by on a sort of lived-in seedy charm, a bit like Brighton itself.
With both the police and social services breathing down his neck, Bunny soon begins to unravel. He becomes increasingly foul and unforgivable: vengefully urinating over a woman’s toothbrush, robbing a blind widow, taunting his wheelchair-bound father-in-law about his disability. By the time we meet the monstrous Bunny Snr (David Threlfall), we begin to understand how he got quite so dysfunctional and why the cycle of toxic masculinity must be broken.
Sarah Greene (Bad Sisters, Normal People) is luminous as the ghost of Libby, who appears to both father and son in a bid to save them from one another. As she tells Junior: “Your dad's not brilliant at looking after anyone who's not your dad.” A glimpse of redemption is offered in the hallucinatory Twin Peaks-style finale, which features a moustachioed cameo from Cave himself.
The story is flawed as a drama and somewhat sags in the middle. Subplots involving Brighton’s West Pier burning down and a horned serial killer don’t deliver. Scenes of father-and-son fleeing the scene of Bunny’s latest escapade, pursued by an angry husband, grow repetitive. The imagery - the devil, water, characters wearing either black or white - isn’t what you’d call subtle.
Bunny’s queasy fixations with Avril Lavigne and Kylie Minogue from the novel have wisely been left out, while a notorious rape scene is mercifully toned down. What hasn’t is the eye-watering moment when Bunny walks out of his wife’s funeral to masturbate into a toilet sink. Hopefully any young Whovians will have switched off by then. Bad Bunny.
Directed by Industry’s Isabella Eklöf , the series looks ravishing, all colour-saturated seaside and kitschy interiors. Starling murmurations become a metaphor for Bunny’s swirling, spiralling mind. There are flashes of real beauty, often during dream sequences. These come as welcome relief from the sleazy strip clubs and scuzzy drug dens in which some of the action unfolds.
Without Smith, the series might have become too twisted and near-unwatchable. Bunny Munro might be a repellent character but Smith makes him perversely compelling. His sheer magnetism seduces the viewer, rather like it does those housewives. At its dark heart, this is a story of fathers and sons, love and loss. And if you’ve ever fancied seeing the Eleventh Doctor’s derriere, you’re in luck.
The Death Of Bunny Munro launches on Thursday 20th November on Sky Atlantic and streaming service NOW
