Damn if he doesn’t make aimlessness look handsome. He’s all hot glares and gravelly snarls, and that may be enough to mesmerize viewers for a time.
Hardy previously played the role of Heathcliff in an ITV production of “Wuthering Heights,” and he carries himself with the same sense of danger and vulnerability as Emily Brontë’s hero possesses. But “Taboo” relies far more on Hardy’s charismatic brooding than a plot that progresses through this visceral landscape with a sense of structure and purpose. Hardy and Knight worked together in a more limited capacity on “Peaky Blinders,” another period drama that shatters the popular fantasy of Romantic-era London as a place of manicured, lavender-scented civility. As to where that is exactly, who can say? Provided the viewer isn’t utterly bored or bewildered by what she sees, the show thus far seems like it could go to interesting places. The producers of “Taboo” seem to have aspired to explore a number of complex, uncomfortable issues in the three episodes made available to critics without concretely establishing a thesis about any of them. But it also could shape up to be a fable about how assumption and disparagement can be turned to the underdog’s advantage. “Taboo,” a vanity piece executive produced by Hardy and the drama's creator Steven Knight, is a study in class divisiveness and the guerrilla tactics that could be used to wage war on the privileged. The outwardly clean in his world lord their purity and uprightness over those stooped closely enough to the earth to be polluted by it, and this arrogance makes them vulnerable. Soon enough we come to understand that James uses muck as camouflage. Even when he finds himself in the presence of rich men, he’s almost always smeared with some kind of filth. His top hat slices the air like a shark’s fin. Throughout each episode he wears a long duster coat that billows ominously as he defiantly struts through streets and marble halls.
The lives of the wealthy shine in contrast they sit on shimmering brocaded upholstery, sipping tea from milk-colored cups and basking in light pouring in from clear windows.Īppearance is an indicator of worthiness in this 1814 Britain, making James Keziah Delaney (Tom Hardy) somewhat of a mystery. Dirt glooms the clothing of the lower class, darkening the atmosphere inside the taverns, brothels and hovels of the less fortunate. Grime powders the faces of prostitutes, blackens the fingernails of dockworkers and dulls the smiles of its waifs. The London of “Taboo,” debuting at 10 p.m.
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