Three Game of Thrones alumni—Jonathan Pryce (the High Sparrow), Oona Chaplin (Talisa Stark) and Roger Ashton-Griffiths (Mace Tyrell)—grace the cast of Taboo, a new British television drama that premiered on BBC One on Jan 7, and three days later on FX Network in the US. Might it help with Game of Thrones cravings as fans wait for Season 7? Let’s take a closer look.
Taboo, which is set in 1814 London, is an eight-episode miniseries starring Tom Hardy. Nina Gold is the casting director for both Taboo and Game of Thrones, which may explain some of the actor crossover. Two episodes in, the show is deliciously dark, meandering and odd. As the pet project of a big movie star (Hardy’s name is all over the top credits), FX likely gave Hardy all kinds of creative leeway. It’s not for everyone, but Game of Thrones fans who love a grimdark tone and unsavory characters, hints of the supernatural and anti-heroes driven by dangerous obsessions may well find themselves enjoying Taboo.
Hardy plays James Keziah Delaney, son of the recently deceased Horace Delaney, owner of a London-based shipping company. James disappeared in Africa 12 years before and was considered dead, so when he unexpectedly returns to London to claim his inheritance (including a much-disputed plot of land in the New World called Nootka Sound), powerful enemies start to move against him. James has come home a different man with a hidden source of wealth. He is cloaked in mystery, and is determined to resume an incestuous affair with his now married half-sister, Zilpha Geary (Chaplin).
The always superb Pryce plays Sir Stuart Strange, the Chairman of the East India Company (EIC), a mercantile organization so rich it has its own private armies. Pryce works it to the hilt here, constantly tapping his walking stick and embodying a man used to wielding power any way he wishes. Just as it did on Game of Thrones, Pryce’s powerful screen presence serves him well, and when he gets on a roll, it’s difficult to remember there are other actors in the scene with him. His best scene so far involves his flabbergasted rage at the idea of Delaney refusing to look at an EIC offer to purchase Nootka Sound. Sir Strange immediately turns to more vicious means to get what he wants. He’s a nasty delight to watch.
Zilpha Geary, meanwhile, is married to the boorish Thorne Geary, and is in a precarious situation. Her husband wants to use her to get a piece of her dead father’s inheritance. As a woman living in an oppressive, pre-Victorian society, she has little means of fighting back.
Chaplin, looking more gaunt than when she was on Game of Thrones, employs her luminous eyes to the maximum, giving us a woman torn between her world’s strict moral codes and an intractable, overpowering attraction to her half-brother that both thrills and disgusts her. Zilpha hasn’t had much screentime yet, but Chaplin’s ability to match Hardy’s intensity bodes well for the future.
Roger Ashton-Griffiths (Mace Tyrell) makes a brief appearance as Appleby, a member of Stuart’s EIC council. Ashton-Griffiths delivers a few lines with the trademark soft stupidity of Mace Tyrell. Actually, if you put some armor on Appleby it would be difficult to tell the two characters apart.
Visually, Taboo loves the dirt and grime of pre-Victorian London, and is fond of showing us the soap-deprived citizens not living in mansions. But when the story calls for balance, the show delivers. Much of the cinematography is breathtakingly beautiful. The scenes that take place in the homes and the edifices of the wealthy revel in the sumptuous excesses of money. The sight of the East India Company’s rotten old men clothed in the finest fabrics, colors and silks makes a special statement of its own.
Taboo is somewhat slow and ponderous, but in a good way. It loves the deep darkness—floating in it, breathing it in, and like the colonial explorer’s journey up the unknown, treacherous jungle river, invites the viewer along for an ever-more unsettling ride. Some people won’t like how self-aware it all is, but if you love watching the sturdy Tom Hardy striding endlessly through shadowed alleys and landscapes, cloak billowing magnificently in the coal smog, then Taboo is a show you’re going to like.
In many ways, Taboo is about the atmosphere, more about the journey than the destination. Above all, it’s about Hardy’s character: James Kezhiah Delaney is a surviving Kurtz come back from the heart of darkness, a man transformed by the dark continent returning to the modern world looking for revenge.
If we agree that Taboo is a character piece, revenge plots and incestuous liaisons aside, then its exploration of the mysterious world inside of James Delaney is the real core of the story, similar in many ways to Daniel Day Lewis’ sprawling expedition through Daniel Plainview’s character in There Will be Blood. Delaney says that he can see the goodness inside of other people; the great final question of Taboo may be how much goodness is left in Delaney himself.