Daily Mail - Daily Mail Weekend Magazine
PERIOD DRAMA JUST GOT DARKER
Hollywood star Tom Hardy is a dangerous former soldier back from the wars 200 years ago in Taboo – and he promises it’s like nothing you’ve ever seen
The main character is brilliant but brutal, a cross between ace detective Sherlock Holmes and Bill Sikes, the beast who terrorises London’s East End in Oliver Twist. And it’s a period drama, but one that’s far removed from Downton Abbey, Poldark or Grantchester.
Welcome to Taboo, BBC1’s new eightpart Saturday night series, devised by Hollywood star Tom Hardy, his writer father Chips and Peaky Blinders creator Steven Knight. As you’d expect from Knight, it’s violent, highly stylised and crackling with sexual energy.
Their story – brought to life by a stellar cast including Jonathan Pryce, Oona Chaplin and Hardy himself – centres on the dark, brooding James Delaney who returns to England after 12 years in Africa, following the death of his father Horace. ‘I saw it as anti-Downton Abbey, a period drama but one which was a long way from the kind that you see a lot of on TV,’ says Tom, who was an Oscar nominee last year for The Revenant.
It’s 1814 when we first meet Delaney, whose ship has dropped anchor off the English coast. Once ashore, he secretively digs a hole and buries a pouch stuffed with diamonds. Later, he visits the body of his late father at a morgue in London. Reactions to Delaney’s return suggest viewers are in for quite a ride. At Horace Delaney’s funeral he tells his half-sister Zilpha (Oona Chaplin) that he still loves her and her body language suggests the feeling is mutual. So it’s not surprising that Zilpha’s husband Thorne Geary, who believed James had died in Africa, is appalled by his reappearance.
Sir Stuart Strange (Jonathan Pryce), the head of the East India Company, is another more powerful enemy. He’s
desperate to get his hands on Nootka Sound in North America, a valuable piece of land which has been bequeathed by Horace to James.
Investigators at the East India Company delve into James’s past and discover he’d been kicked out of the company’s military wing in the past for murdering an officer.
Taboo has been a labour of love for the Hardys, who’ve been working on
the project since 2009. ‘Delaney has been in Tom’s mind for a long time and he knows everything about him,’ says Dean Baker, one of several executive producers including Ridley Scott. ‘We were getting to the stage where we were due to start rehearsals and Tom said, “I don’t need to rehearse, I’ve known how I was going to play this character for the past seven years.”
‘It’s about Delaney having the intel-
ligence and hyper-vigilance to be one step ahead of everybody else,’ adds Dean. ‘Tom and Chips thought it would be interesting to have at the heart of the drama a character who is really dangerous but also has this amazing intellect.’
He says Tom’s eye for detail and pursuit of perfection made it a challenging shoot. ‘Not only is Tom a perfectionist but he expects every- body around him to be a perfectionist and doesn’t stop until what he is working on is as close as it can possibly be to the way he imagined it. That presents its challenges but nobody would want it any other way. The end result is a period drama, the like of which you will never have seen before.’ Taboo, tonight, 9.15pm, BBC1.