Our First Look at 'The Death of Bunny Munro' Features Shirtless Single Dad Matt Smith
Matt Smith and Rafael Mathé in "The Death of Bunny Munro"
(Photo: Sky/Parisa Taghizadeh)
U.K. network Sky has revealed our first look at its upcoming six-part dark comedy, The Death of Bunny Munro, which stars Matt Smith (Doctor Who) as an alcoholic womanizer who must face his worst self when he's forced to become a single parent to his son, Bunny Junior (played by newcomer Rafael Mathé).
Our first image of this series sees its star smoking a cigarette in his underwear at a laundromat, indicating that this role is probably closer to the Daemon Targaryen bad-boy side of things when it comes to Smith's performance history. (Let's just put it this way: The Eleventh Doctor, this guy is not.)
Based on the 2009 novel of the same name by Nick Cave (yes, the guy who fronts the band that did the infamous Peaky Blinders theme song), The Death of Bunny Munro follows the story of its titular character who finds himself in charge of his young son following his wife's suicide. As they embark on a road trip across the south of England, the pair struggle to process their grief: Bunny through his sex-addicted attempts to seduce women, Bunny Junior (Rafael Mathé) by talking to the ghost of his dead mother. Oh, and there's also a serial killer on the loose.
“To work alongside Nick Cave on The Death of Bunny Munro feels like a great honor," Smith said in a statement when the series was first announced. "It’s a brilliant exploration of love, grief, and chaos. At its heart a deep, difficult, and tender story about a father and son, coping with loss and change. Clerkenwell Films and Sky feels like the perfect home to make such a bold story and Pete has delivered such wonderful scripts, both funny and heartbreaking in equal measure."
Here's the series synopsis.
Following his wife Libby’s death by suicide, sex addicted, door-to-door beauty product salesman and self-professed lothario Bunny Munro finds himself saddled with a young son and only a loose concept of parenting. Together with nine-year-old Bunny Junior he embarks on an epic and increasingly out-of-control road trip across Southern England as the two struggle to contain their grief in very different ways.
As Bunny bounces from one sales pitch to the next, trying to seduce any woman he meets, Bunny Junior kills time talking to the ghost of his mother and distracting himself from the dawning realisation that his dad isn’t just fallible—he’s a complete mess. As he starts to unravel, Bunny realises he must do something to rescue his son from his own outdated notions of what it is to be a man. The Death of Bunny Munro is both a wild cautionary tale and a tender portrait of a father and son.
The ensemble cast also includes Sarah Greene (Bad Sisters) as Libby, Johann Myers (Somewhere Boy) as Poodle, Robert Glenister (Sherwood) as Geoffrey, Alice Feetham (Boiling Point) as Yvonne, David Threlfall (Funny Woman) as Bunny Snr, Lindsay Duncan (Truelove) as Doris Pennington, and Elizabeth Berrington (Last Night in Soho) as Charlotte Parnovar.
The Death of Bunny Munro is written by BAFTA winner Pete Jackson (Somewhere Boy) and directed by Isabella Eklöf (Industry). Smith, Cave, Jackson, and Eklöf are all executive producers, along with Manpreet Dosanjh for Sky Studios and Petra Fried, Ed Macdonald, and Emily Harrison for Clerkenwell Films (Baby Reindeer). Matthew Mulot is producer.
The series does not yet have an American distributor, but given Smith's global popularity, this doesn't seem like a problem that will last all that long. The Death of Bunny Munro will premiere in 2025 on Sky and streaming service Sky NOW.
