Taboo opens with a man stepping off a ship and into a grave he intends to dig himself. James Keziah Delaney, played by Tom Hardy, has spent twelve years in Africa. He comes home to London in 1814 with fourteen stolen diamonds and a plan for revenge.
Trailer, via FX Networks.
James Delaney and the East India Company
The eight-episode series aired on BBC One from 7 January 2017 to 25 February 2017, and on FX in the United States from 10 January 2017. Steven Knight created it with Tom Hardy and Hardy’s father, Chips Hardy, working from a story by the two Hardys.
The plot sets Delaney against the East India Company, criminal gangs, and a city rotting from the inside. Jonathan Pryce plays Stuart Strange. Oona Chaplin plays Zilpha Geary. Stephen Graham plays Atticus. The show wants the East India Company to feel like a monster, and Pryce gives it a face worth fearing.
What the first series gets right
Kristoffer Nyholm and Anders Engström split directing duties, four episodes each. Max Richter composed the score.
The craft holds up. Hardy’s performance carries the weight, and the pacing keeps the eight episodes moving. Reviews were generally favourable, with critics pointing to Hardy, the visual presentation, and that pacing as the strengths.
Here is what matters, ranked:
- Tom Hardy as James Delaney — the reason to watch.
- Max Richter’s score — the reason to keep watching.
- The 1814 London setting — grime done with care.
- The East India Company plot — ambitious, sometimes slow.
The numbers behind Taboo
- Score: 6.7/10
- Metacritic: 67/100
- Episodes: 8
- Seasons: 1
- First aired: 7 January 2017
- Last aired: 25 February 2017
- Network: BBC One
Where Taboo falls short
The show never solves its own central problem. Delaney is a mystery, and the series treats that mystery as the point. A man with fourteen diamonds and a dead father should be more than a mood.
Taboo is a drama and a mystery, and it is better at the second than the first. The corruption, the gangs, the misery of the working class — all of it is there, and none of it lands as hard as Hardy’s face.
This is a show built on one performance and one atmosphere. Both are strong. Neither is enough to make eight episodes feel like eight hours well spent.
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