Taboo

Taboo premiered on BBC One in January 2017 and on FX in the United States days later, arriving with a pedigree designed to generate attention. Created by Steven Knight, Tom Hardy, and Hardy’s father Chips Hardy, with Ridley Scott as executive producer, the show dropped Hardy into Regency-era London as James Keziah Delaney, a man presumed dead who returns from Africa to claim his father’s estate and immediately makes enemies of everyone with power.

The eight-episode first season established a mood that few television shows have attempted: dense, oppressive, and deliberately paced, set in a London that feels more like a fever dream than a historical recreation. The East India Company wants Delaney’s strategically valuable land. The Crown wants it too. Delaney wants revenge, profit, and something darker that the show takes its time revealing. Hardy co-created the character with his father, and the personal investment shows in a performance that dominates every frame.

Community response has been enthusiastic but complicated. Viewers who connected with the show’s atmosphere and Hardy’s performance tend to be deeply loyal. Those who struggled with the pacing, the audio mixing, or the occasionally impenetrable plotting found it more impressive than enjoyable. The long wait for a second season, announced in 2017 but still unrealized years later, has kept the show in a strange cultural limbo.

Tom Hardy Commands the Screen

Hardy’s James Delaney is the show’s center of gravity, and his performance is the primary reason to watch. He plays a man who has seen terrible things, done terrible things, and returned home carrying all of it just beneath the surface. The character speaks in growls and fragments, communicates as much through physical presence as words, and radiates a menace that makes every conversation feel like it could turn violent at any moment.

What separates the performance from simple intimidation is the flashes of vulnerability Hardy weaves through the darkness. Delaney’s relationships with his half-sister, his father’s memory, and his own psychological damage create moments of genuine human connection that the show’s gothic atmosphere might otherwise smother. Hardy makes you believe this is a man capable of both genuine tenderness and extreme violence, and the unpredictability of which one you’ll get in any given scene provides much of the show’s tension.

The production design and cinematography create a version of 1814 London that feels oppressively real. Mud, smoke, candlelight, and shadow dominate every frame. The Thames is a character in itself, dark and full of secrets. The visual approach matches the story’s tone perfectly, creating a world where corruption and danger feel as natural as the weather.

The supporting cast, including work from Oona Chaplin, Jonathan Pryce, and David Hayman, provides counterweight to Hardy’s gravitational pull. The East India Company representatives are particularly effective as antagonists, representing institutional power that should overwhelm a single man but can’t quite figure out how to handle one who refuses to play by their rules.

Mumbling, Pacing, and Narrative Fog

The most persistent criticism is the audio. Hardy’s dialogue delivery, combined with the show’s sound mixing, makes significant portions of the dialogue difficult to understand without subtitles. This is a conscious stylistic choice that serves the character’s enigmatic nature, but it also creates a practical barrier to engagement. Viewers who can’t parse what Delaney is saying in crucial scenes lose the thread of plots that are already deliberately obscure.

Pacing is the show’s other divisive quality. Taboo moves slowly and makes no apologies for it. Episodes build tension through accumulation rather than incident, and the show is more interested in atmosphere than action. Some viewers find this approach hypnotic. Others find it tedious, particularly in the middle episodes where the plotting feels circular rather than progressive.

The narrative itself can be opaque. The show juggles multiple conspiracies, political maneuvering, and supernatural elements without always providing enough clarity for viewers to track what’s happening and why. Characters appear and disappear without clear motivation, and the supernatural dimension of Delaney’s abilities is introduced but never fully explained. The show seems to prefer mystery over clarity, which is an effective aesthetic choice that occasionally tips into confusion.

Some viewers have noted that the show leans into a narrative framework that positions Delaney as a lone figure of exceptional ability against established institutions, and this dynamic can feel oversimplified given the complex historical setting the show otherwise renders with care.

Gothic London as a State of Mind

Taboo’s most distinctive quality is its commitment to mood as a storytelling device. The show isn’t just set in Regency-era London. It uses that setting to create a psychological landscape that mirrors its protagonist’s inner life. The filth, the darkness, the corruption, the sense that powerful forces are always watching from the shadows. All of it serves as an externalization of Delaney’s own psychological state.

This approach gives Taboo a texture that few period dramas achieve. It doesn’t feel like a costume show. It feels like something dredged up from the historical record’s darkest corners, and the commitment to that vision, from the writing to the production design to the score by Max Richter, creates something genuinely atmospheric in a way that’s hard to replicate.

Should You Watch Taboo?

If you’re drawn to atmospheric period dramas with strong central performances and a willingness to prioritize mood over plot, Taboo is worth your time. Hardy’s Delaney is a memorable creation, and the show’s visual and sonic world is unlike anything else on television. Fans of gothic storytelling, historical intrigue, and character-driven tension will find a lot to appreciate in these eight episodes.

Skip it if slow pacing and murky plotting test your patience. The show asks you to sit with ambiguity and trust that it knows where it’s going, and that trust isn’t always rewarded. If you struggle with dialogue-heavy shows where the dialogue itself is difficult to hear, keep subtitles on or be prepared to miss key information.

The Verdict on Taboo

Taboo is a dark, atmospheric period thriller that lives and dies by Tom Hardy’s commanding performance as a man who terrifies empires. The Regency-era London setting is rendered with grimy beauty, and the show builds tension through mood and mystery rather than action. It demands patience and rewards it inconsistently, with some episodes delivering genuinely gripping drama and others losing momentum in murky plotting. The dialogue can be hard to follow, literally and figuratively, and the pacing tests even devoted viewers. But when Hardy is on screen, fully inhabiting a character who seems to operate by rules no one else understands, the show generates a pull that’s hard to shake.