Throughout our lives, we all make mistakes. Sometimes they’re tiny little things that niggle at us for as long as we remain conscious, preying on our insecurities and anxieties. Other times, we don’t even realise we’re making those mistakes, actions so burned into us that these mistakes seem like natural actions. Sometimes we don’t realise the harm those mistakes have, on ourselves and on those around us, until it’s far too late. Only when those mistakes are met with very real and horrifying consequences may we realise what we’ve done. At that time, it’s far too late, and for as much as we may want to atone, we may no longer have the tools or resources to know how to.

It’s these ideas at the core of the Death of Bunny Munro as it focuses on the titular Bunny (Matt Smith), a sex addict struggling with the grief from the suicide of his wife, Libby (Sarah Greene), partly spurred on by the toxicity of his lifestyle. After social services deem him an unsafe place for his son Junior (Rafael Mathé), they hit the road together, all while a notorious serial killer slowly closes in on their hometown of Brighton.

Bunny Munro is possibly one of the most challenging characters to lead a series in a long time. He’s a man messed up from years of internalised trauma and toxic masculinity, treating those around him with reckless abandon and as props for his own self-assurance. His sex addiction is spurred on by a catastrophic misunderstanding of what masculinity is, a warped worldview that tells him the only worth he has as a man is through the sexual power and dominance of life. The only person who matters in life is yourself, the number one man. Taking care of yourself and your own needs is all that matters, no matter the consequences to those around you. Sex is not a means of connection or worth to Bunny- it’s akin to a job, something he simply does because he knows how to. A perfect example of this is in the first episode, during Libby’s funeral, when Bunny notices a stained-glass depiction of the Virgin Mary breastfeeding. He leaves for the bathroom during this to quickly handle a situation in his pants, as easily as one might leave the room to wash their hands or cry at the horrificness of the reality they are living in. For Bunny, his response is just sex- it’s the only thing he knows.

Playing a character like this is no small feat, and yet Matt Smith effortlessly rises to the challenge. He’s insufferable in a lot of ways from the second we meet him, showing us the “charms” he’s used to getting his way his entire life. “I’m Bunny”, he says, scrunching his nose up, twitching it with snuffling sounds while making bunny ears with his hands. It would be cute if it weren’t so outrageously scummy with how blatantly he disregards respect for the woman at home he’s meant to love. As the show progresses, and after Libby dies, Bunny gets more and more frantic. Drowning in guilt, he needs to return to the normalcy of a man using sex to feel on top of the world, and we see this same bunny face tactic over and over again. Each time we see it, is not the same as the last as Bunny begins to become paranoid, scared, and guilty of the things he’s done, losing his grip on the situation just a little more each time. Smith shows us snapshots of this character’s mental deterioration each time this face appears.

However, this notion of masculinity hurts Bunny as much as it helps him. Not only through forming connections with people around him- treating his other male friends as lesser people to cater to his own needs because they may not be as attractive or “desirable” and alienating women with his advances- but through how he views himself, and how his role models view him. Bunny walks a fine line between the masculinity he has been taught and the more natural “feminine” traits he may have, such as the sensitive romantic side he had when he first romanced Libby, or his job as a women’s beauty salesman that he excels at. It’s through these kinds of traits we see the man Bunny might have been if things had shaken out differently for him, and it’s these exact traits that are derided by his father, Bunny Senior (Kent Goldfinch). Bunny was moulded into this by the man he looked up to his entire life, and yet it’s still not enough, and he’s still not enough of a man. It’s this sort of relationship we see Bunny forming with his own son, Junior, in the other leading half of the show.

Junior is probably one of the best-written child characters I’ve seen on TV, striking realism in a way that can be quite hard to capture with these sorts of characters. Children are sponges of the world around them, soaking up information and knowledge from the things they watch, hear and read. They mimic the behaviour they see because they have yet to understand what exactly is and isn’t acceptable. They’re still finding out the things they like, how to act in certain situations, and even form their own personalities- they’re still people in progress. Junior, in particular, is a wonderful representation of this people in progress idea, and how much that progress can be affected and stunted by tragic events such as the ones that unfold in The Death of Bunny Munro.

This is established very early on, with a beautiful shot during Libby’s wake where Bunny is leaning against a wall drinking a can of beer when Junior sidles up next to him with a can of Coke, adapting the exact same pose, like a miniature mirror of his father. It’s a simple, but striking shot that gets the point across immediately, showing Junior standing in the shadow of his father and foreshadowing the person he may eventually become through the teachings of Bunny, especially now that his mother is gone. This idea continues throughout the show, as we watch Junior vie for the attention of his dad and figure out ways to impress him, making jokes that don’t quite land or treating others in ways that aren’t quite acceptable.

One of the best episodes in the show is carried by this plot too in episode 4, when, after Junior is left alone by his dad at a pub, he is taken in and looked after by one of the strippers who works there, Yvonne (Alice Feetham). This episode works wonders in deconstructing the generational trauma Junior is currently being passed down from his dad, and depicting how there’s still time to undo it. When Yvonne is initially introduced, it’s through the lens of Bunny and the other men in the club, as a sexual object to be desired and ogled and thought of only in the context of the pleasure of the patrons, a message treated so casually when introducing a child to that environment. However, as Junior begins to spend time with Yvonne, the way she is portrayed changes, expanding on her life and becoming Junior’s first-ever positive parental role model. Junior can’t quite let go of the unstable life he holds with his dad, yet it’s this first look at what a normal life could look like with other kids his age that begins to make him realise that the life he leads is not what it should look like, and that maybe there could be something better out there.

This view of neglect is not just explored through Junior’s relationship with his father, but with his mother, too. Libby’s portrayal in this show uses one of my favourite narrative devices in fictional writing- that being exploring the identity of a deceased person through the eyes of the people who knew them. We never get to meet Libby properly or see who she was as a person; all we have to go by is the idealised versions of Libby that other people deliver to us, through the people we knew her, lamenting about her death, flashbacks of Bunny’s memories or Junior imagining her presence with him during tough moments. All of these words and ideas portray Libby as the perfect daughter, or the only woman Bunny ever truly loved, or the caring mother Junior wants to believe he had. Her mental illness is only ever mentioned in passing, as a backdrop to the tragedy of her suicide and not a real issue that shaped the person she may have been, the care she was neglected from getting and the care she may have neglected giving her son, too. We see this negative side through little details, such as the state of the house Junior lives in, the fact that his shoes are multiple sizes too small for his feet, or his blepharitis that is improperly treated. We’ll never know who Libby truly was, but all of these pieces give us the faintest idea of the life she led, the struggles she faced and who she may have been in other circumstances.

This neglect that Junior faces, however, isn’t recognised by him until he gets the chance to see other kids living different lives, and it makes for such a heartbreaking performance by Rafael Mathé that it would be a crime not to have this debut role also be his breakout role. The writing around Junior deserves particular praise for its difficult depiction of a child suffering neglect and trauma the way it does, however, many seasoned actors would struggle with a role as complex as this, and Mathé deserves all the recognition possible for his work here.

All throughout the series, however, there is a lurking sense of danger as a serial killer targeting women slowly closes in on the location of Bunny. This plotline is the little finishing touch that ties the entire thing together, a background detail that slowly becomes bigger and bigger. As the serial killer closes in on Brighton, he hurts more and more women in his path, the same as Bunny has been doing his entire life. Libby’s death is on Bunny’s head, and in his mind, the guilt makes him and the path he’s been following his entire life no better than the horned killer.

The Death of Bunny Munro explores the effect that a patriarchal view of masculinity has on not just the women who become direct victims of the men who practice it, but the men themselves. Bunny Munro is as much a victim of his father and himself as anybody else he hurts, and the only way to end this vicious cycle started by his father is to make sure that it ends with him.

There’s a sense of timelessness in this show, from the bright pastel colours of Brighton, to the lack of dated references and to the poppy yet sometimes ethereally haunting soundtrack, including the song Bright Horses sung by Nick Cave, the original books author. It reminds us that the issues talked about in this show could be happening within any contemporary time. The show may be set in the early 2000s, but it’s just as important thematically to the real world social climates we find ourselves in in 2025.

The Death of Bunny Munro is available now on Sky and NOW.