The Death of Bunny Munro - AD Introduction

The death of Bunny Munro is a Clerkenwell Films production in association with Sky Studios and based on a novel by Nick Cave.

It’s darkly twisted protagonist, Bunny Munro (Matt Smith), is a swaggeringly handsome lothario with rampant sex addiction. His son, Bunny Junior (Rafael Mattie) idolises him. 

He attempts to satiates his unquenchable sexual appetite as he goes about his work as a travelling salesman – going door to door proffering beauty products and sexual gratification to the young and gullible ladies on his ‘list’.

In the first episode, Family man, Bunny’s wife, Libby, (Sarah Green), commits suicide. She suffers from mental illness and Bunny’s continued unfaithfulness has pushed her over the edge. After her death, Libby appears to her son as a ghost whom Junior talks with. 

In the opening scenes, she stares out of their bedroom window, watching as Brighton’s West pier is consumed by fire, placing the action in 2003.

Dressed in her elegant, red, wedding negligee, her desperation overflows as she begs Bunny to return home. He too can see the fire from his down-at-heel hotel room, but lying, he tells her he’s miles away. In fact, he’s about to have congress with a prostitute. 

It’s at the funeral that Bunny’s caustic relationship with Libby’s parents, Doris and Charlie Pennington, (Lindsey Duncan and Andrew McLay), becomes apparent. Chain-smoking Bunny cannot even make it through the funeral service without escaping to a brick-built toilet complex to masturbate, and when he emerges, the ceremony is over. He asks Doris to take care of Junior, but her vitriol overflows with hatred and disdain. She won’t take the child, Junior reminds her too much of Bunny, and his philandering ways that caused her daughter to hang herself.

Geoffrey, (Robert Glenister) is Bunny’s boss at Eternity Enterprises. Bunny’s co-workers are Poodle (Johann Myers) and Raymond (Ed Eales-White). The boys, with their girlfriends, all turn up at Bunny’s flat for Libby’s wake, and the ‘party’ soon becomes a bacchanal frenzy of booze and drugs. Junior is sent to bed. It’s then he’s first visited by his mother’s loving ghost.

The next day, after a vigorous ‘seeing to’ by Poodle’s girlfriend Annie, Social services turn up to check on Junior. During their visit, and their threatening to take Junior away from Bunny, the pair make their escape. So begins an out-of-control road trip of sex, grief and serial killer on the loose, making his way towards Brighton.   

THE MAIN CHARACTERS:

Bunny Munro – a slender, handsome man in his late thirties, early forties. He’s white, with centre parting of dark brown hair that flops rakishly across his forehead. He’s constantly combing it back with an insouciant sweep of his hand. 

Set in 2003, charismatic Bunny is a travelling salesman, selling beauty potions and lotions to low income, desperate housewives around the Brighton area. He drives a gold convertible Vauxhall Astra with red plush seat covers. His beguiling, charming, boyish appeal is faultless as a weapon of seduction. He mercilessly wields his talent to satiate his overwhelming sexual needs, makes ‘bunny ears’ with his hands behind his head, twitches his nose. 

He rarely fails to conquer, and when his lothario ways are ridiculed and rejected, he retaliates by urinating all over Charlotte’s bathroom and steals cash from her handbag. Unable to resist from bragging to her, the martial arts trained woman’s response is to bloody his nose and throw him, and samples case, onto the street. 

In episode one, young Bunny, around Junior’s age, is swimming in the outdoor pool at Butlins, watching as his youthful father, Bunny Senior, seduces a woman.  

Bunny Junior – named for his father and grandfather (Bunny Senior). Junior is nine years old, has long cut dark blond hair. He adores his father, and wants to be just like him, learn all his ways. He imitates his father’s moves and language. 

He suffers from blepharitis, that causes swollen, itchy eyelids. There’s a raw-red ring of soreness around his eyes. Libby used to buy him cream to ease the symptoms, but Bunny is not paternal and gives him sunglasses, then cash to buy the cream himself, whilst ‘tending to’ a customer. 

Junior adores his dead mother; who’s ghost appears to comfort him and gently warn him that his father isn’t an ideal role model. She had bought him a children’s encyclopaedia, and he treasure it and uses the knowledge contained within the large, glossy pages, to create a buffer against reality.

Libby – is a white woman with russet red hair that sweeps past her shoulders. She is prettily plump with youthful curves and appears mostly in the negligee she wore on her and Bunny’s wedding night, a long, clinging red nighty, designed by Susie Cave. Her nails are painted coral pink. 

Not only had she bought Junior a children’s encyclopaedia, but she also bought black suits and white shirts in preparation for her funeral, hanging them on the back of her bedroom door, whilst she hangs from a washing line attached to a curtain rail. Bunny’s philandering ways caused her mental illness to spiral into this final, unhappy act. 

Geoffrey – is Bunny’s boss at Eternity Enterprises. He’s a white man, overweight, with a receding hairline of close-cropped hair and goatee beard. He is politically incorrect.

Poodle – is one of Bunny’s co-workers at Eternity Enterprise. He’s a tall, lanky black man with longish hair that resembles a standard poodle, hence his nick name. unlike Bunny, he is somewhat incompetent at selling. Annie, his white, blond girlfriend has a yoga fit body  

Raymond – an unassuming, average height and build white man, with little to say for himself. His girlfriend is white, blond Barbara and suits him perfectly. 

Doris and Charlie Pennington – Libby’s parents. They are vehemently loath Bunny, blaming him for their daughter’s death. They are both white. Doris is stick thin and haggard, Charlie is a wheelchair user, having suffered a stroke a year ago. 

Serial Killer – featured throughout there’ a serial killer making his way towards Brighton. He paints his face red, wears plastic horns and wields a pitchfork. A tabloid headline reads: “horny and on the loose. Crazed nutter wearing devil horns terrorises women in Newcastle.” A CCTV image of the attacker accompanies the feature. 

The Death of Bunny Munro, Series 1 is available weekly on Sky Atlantic and On Demand with Audio Description from the 19th November at 2am. 

Article and Audio Description by Tacye Lynette