Has there been a more relentlessly repulsive fictional being than Bunny Munro? The antihero of Nick Cave’s 2009 novel The Death of Bunny Munro, as played by Matt Smith, is grotesque in the extreme: a strutting, nicotine-stained poster boy for toxic masculinity. The depths that Bunny plumbs are so abhorrent, in fact, that there were times I could scarcely watch this brilliant Sky adaptation. Directed by Isabella Eklöf and written by Pete Jackson, it’s the story of one man’s sordid descent into hell. As with Cave’s music, horror and beauty writhe together in a gothic odyssey – here, on the south coast, where a dour, grey-skied milieu adds to the atmosphere of depravity.
By trade, Bunny is a travelling beauty salesman. While he’s off with yet another woman in a hotel overlooking Brighton’s West Pier as it goes up in real and symbolic flames, his long-suffering wife Libby (Sarah Greene), tormented by his actions, finally takes her own life. At the funeral, Bunny’s reaction is to mock his father-in-law for being in a wheelchair, before having sex with his best friend’s girlfriend at the wake. As I said, not pleasant.
