Tom Hardy holds this grimy period mystery together through sheer menace. The setting rewards attention, but thin characters and too much secrecy make Taboo a qualified choice for anyone drawn to slow, theatrical revenge stories.
Taboo gives us an imposing central performance and a convincingly unpleasant period setting, then makes us wait too long for the people and the plot to develop. Created by Steven Knight, Chips Hardy and Tom Hardy, it follows James Keziah Delaney through a struggle over valuable land in early-1800s London. Revenge and imperial power give the series plenty to work with. Across eight episodes, however, the habit of concealing motives begins to feel like a way of postponing the story.
Tom Hardy is the reason to persist. His James Keziah Delaney has a tightly contained aggression that makes stillness interesting, and the theatrical weight of the performance suits this murky revenge story. We felt a small thrill at the suggestion that he might lose his temper; he gives the slow exchanges a danger the plotting cannot always supply. Yet the series comes to depend on that threat so heavily that it starts to repeat itself.
Jonathan Pryce gives Stuart Strange enough authority to suggest a drama that could afford to look away from its lead. But the writing credited to Steven Knight, Chips Hardy and Ben Hervey too often uses other characters to reinforce the same mystery. Zilpha Geary (Oona Castilla Chaplin) and Brace (David Hayman) need more room as people with concerns that matter in their own right. Concealing motives creates suspense for a while; it also makes it harder to care what anyone stands to lose.
Directors Kristoffer Nyholm and Anders Engström establish the period setting with more conviction than the scripts establish the people. Sonja Klaus’s production design makes London’s mud and grime difficult to ignore, with a level of detail that rewards looking past the actors. Mark Patten’s cinematography favours deep shadows, so that looking closely becomes part of the experience. It is effective at sustaining unease, although the restricted light can make scenes feel alike when their emotional temperature is already much the same.
The score by composer Max Richter is useful company in these stretches, sustaining unease when the drama itself has settled into another wait. It also contributes to a seriousness that the programme seldom relaxes. There is little variation in the pace: a scene can establish its threat and then carry on underlining it. We grew impatient with the repeated hints of secrets, because they delayed the answers without making the questions more interesting.
As a revenge drama, Taboo is entitled to keep some of its central man’s plans to itself. The trouble comes when that secrecy spreads to the series’ treatment of empire and Africa, where ominous suggestion is a poor substitute for thinking clearly. The mystical elements add strangeness, but make an already vague history harder to grasp. A story about power needs a firmer sense of the people being used by it, especially when so much attention goes to the man doing the threatening.
There is enough conviction here to keep the gloom from becoming merely tiresome, and the willingness to risk absurdity gives the programme some personality. The performance at its centre gives the slower passages something to watch. Eight episodes nevertheless ask for more patience than the writing consistently repays. Try it for Tom Hardy if slow, theatrical menace is enough to keep an evening occupied.
