The outsize success of Game of Thrones was always going to be replicated by network television in stories set in the grim past, where passions and desires play out against a suitably medieval setting. BBC One’s new show Taboo may end up becoming the most successful of these inspirations, even if, on current evidence, the show seems to have bitten quite a lot more than it can swallow.
It is 1814, and the British war with America is drawing to an end. James Delaney, played by an electric Tom Hardy, returns after 12 years in Africa to a London crawling with spies of the East India Company and the Crown. He is the sole heir to Nootka Sound, a small strip of land on America’s west coast whose ownership is now caught up with the outcome of the war.
James’s father, Horace, was allegedly poisoned, a fact that assumes heft given the geopolitical importance of his inheritance. While James was away and given up for dead, the East India Company convinced his half-sister Zilpha Geary (Oona Chaplin) to sell it Nootka Sound. But with James back – and the delicious promise of that land providing a gateway to China’s soaring trade – matters have turned decidedly complicated.
Taboo’s premise, thus, is excellent, but the series is weighed down by an excessive love for the horrific. James frequently suffers blackouts occasioned by memories of his mother, a fearsome apparition whose end, the series indicates, was brutal. James himself is rumoured to have committed unspeakable crimes in Africa, including owning a slave ship, an experience that has something to do with his night terrors and the persistent visions of screaming voices.
In spite of this, the series, based on a story written by Hardy, pays sprawling homage to political machinations. Sir Stuart Strange (a menacing Jonathan Pryce) of the East India Company will go to any lengths to ensure that James is rid of the Nootka Sound inheritance. This includes, but is not limited to, sending for an assassin to target him, negotiating with the Crown to jointly take him on, or exploiting the fact of his father’s later-life and hitherto-unknown widow. Regardless, James proves adept at pre-empting the Company.
While the several loose strands, especially those relating to James’s past, may get tied up in future episodes, the feeling that Hardy & Co have introduced gratuitous elements is hard to shake off. Perhaps, the makers of the show – apart from Hardy, his father Chips and Steven Knight (of Dirty Pretty Things, Eastern Promises and Peaky Blinders) are credited as creators – felt that the base storyline was not enough to justify the gravid title of the series.
There are revelations about James and Zilpha, which disturb her husband, Thorne (Jefferson Hall), and Godfrey (Edward Hogg), who takes down minutes of East India Company meetings.
One wonders if the series will be able to wrap all of its strands in its eight-episode run. No matter. The three episodes of the show broadcast thus far have given viewers enough reason to keep returning, if for no other reason than simply to take in Hardy’s smouldering screen persona. Whether Taboo will live up to the success of Game of Thrones is up for debate, but its protagonist is certainly as memorable as any character, human or dragon, from that show.
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