Taboo. May contain scenes of... yes please, to all of the above

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Taboo. May contain scenes of... yes please, to all of the above

February 06, 2017 - 23:24
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Anyone else wondering who the poor person is, whose job it is to walk backwards everywhere with a huge fan, so Delaney’s coat never stops billowing?

Tom Hardy in Taboo

By Anna May @AnnaMayMight

So what’s Delaney been up to lately?

Well…he’s bought a ship called the Adventurer that, according to his flashbacks and some very big clues like manacles having been installed below decks etc., looks to have been a slave ship. Delaney knows the East India Company deals in slaves, but they’ve covered their involvement well and won’t like the fact he’s on to them.

Although, there’s still the matter of Horace’s mystery wife turning up and assuming rights to half his estate. She’s an actress and I don’t think any of us are quite sure if she’s legit or not.

Sadly, for her, she doesn’t realize the danger she’s in and Delaney has already had to rescue her from a violent altercation and imprisonment. Seems she’s also wanted out of the picture, because there are already too many people standing in the way of Nootka Sound.

Top executive at the East India Company, Sir Stuart Strange, continues his blinkered preoccupation with Nootka Sound, and determination to remove the irritation that is James Keziah Delaney. This initially meant no-one in the East India’s employ was exempt from the task of effecting his demise. In fact, it had pretty much become a sackable offence NOT to kill Delaney. However, after a near-death incident, Delaney decided to make a will that states Nootka Sound is to be bequeathed to the Americans if he dies. Now Strange needs a new plan of action.

Enter Mark Gattiss as the Prince Regent, who’s waiting to become George IV as soon as daddy, George III, dies. As usual, he’s portrayed as immature and petulant. His private secretary, Solomon Coop, is far more interesting. Having enjoyed actor, Jason Watkins, in Being Human several years back, I can only hope he will be playing Coop as a formidable enemy of the East India Company, should they try to mess him about…which they probably will. With the Crown having very little control over the East India Company, there is a great deal of tension between the two.

Coop’s distinct lack of respect for the Prince Regent gives us an amusing first impression of how underwhelmed he is by people in prominent positions. So, when George’s response to mention of the East India Company is, “Fuck them as well,” Coop replies with a very smug, “Oh, I intend to.” I have a feeling Solomon Coop is going to try his hardest to do exactly that…and I look forward to seeing how Delaney fits into his plans.

Already, Coop is working towards bringing the East India Company down for its part in the deaths of hundreds of slaves, who drowned after one of the company’s slave ships sank. Nobody’s supposed to know about their involvement in the slave trade, so Coop is very pleased to be the one to expose Strange as the main perpetrator.

Poor Stuart Strange, though. On the one hand he wants Delaney out of the picture, but on the other he needs him alive, so is doing everything he can to stop him being killed. Even when Zilpha’s husband challenges him to a duel, the East India Company steps in to ensure Delaney comes to no harm.

Annoyingly, the general lack of answers to Delaney’s direct requests for names and information about his father’s death seems to be totally acceptable. Even when he asks Brace who it was that supplied the Honey Beer, which could well have poisoned his father, he’s told the man has already died and his wife is nowhere to be found. Delaney just lets this go. Really? Okay…the guy isn’t around anymore, but Brace seems to know enough about him, SO WHAT WAS HIS NAME THEN?!

It’s already been made clear Brace was around when Delaney was a child…and still feels he can speak his mind as an elder. Also, he doesn’t seem to appreciate being put upon by Delaney and having to perform duties that waste his time etc. So it’s interesting to hear Delaney purposefully reaffirm their relationship by telling Brace that Parliament is about to debate whether servants can be beaten in future. “The Whigs want to protect you. I believe that would lead to anarchy,” he says.

To add to the intrigue of Delaney’s parents and their deaths, a symbolic mark he finds in the boarded up chimney breast of his mother’s bedroom is identical to one he has on his back. He wants to know what that mark means. Again, his mother is described by Brace as having gone increasingly mad before she died. A pattern methinks.

Now we find out that Horace put Delaney’s mother in an insane asylum because she couldn’t pass herself off as the dutiful wife of an important man such as himself. Is this true?

I’m still not sure if Brace is friend or foe. He is fairly obstructive where Nootka Sound is concerned. He wants Delaney to hand it over to the East India Company, which makes you wonder if he was all set to receive a handsome sum of money from them that would have released him from his servitude, in return for playing a part in helping to poison Horace to death. If this is the case, is Delaney Jnr his next target. All speculation, of course.

More recently, Delaney acknowledged out loud that Brace knows a lot about his affairs, so we know he’s aware of just how useful Brace might be to his enemies.

As if he hasn’t enough problems already, Delaney’s now roped in the local chemist to help him make gunpowder…and that little boy, whose keep he’s paying, does indeed appear to be his son. But, never mind, he’s happy for the lad to stir all the chemicals to make the gunpowder too, because so what if he blows himself up doing it.

Meanwhile, Delaney is still trying to woo his sister…and if we were in any doubt as to their incest being an actual thing, we’re not now. Just the other day she sat astride him on a pew in the church (in the church, mind), whilst basically telling him they would never be lovers again. She’s not well, she really isn’t.

I do feel a bit sorry for her, though, as her husband treats her like utter crap. I know it’s not nice to think your wife might be having it off with her brother, but if anyone could convince the sultry Zilpha that her stubbly sibling could be the love of her life…it’s horrid hubby, Thorne.

But what’s this? Thorne gets a vicar in to exorcise Delaney’s demons, or whatever they are, from Zilpha. Doesn’t look like it worked. In fact, it’s made things worse. Having tried to get her brother to stop shagging her in her dreams, she’s now totally up for joining him in his weirdness.

All in all, this series has really sucked me in. As more and more is brought in about the misdoings of the East India Company and the interest in Nootka Sound by other parties with their own agendas, Delaney’s job of retaining ownership and, indeed, keeping himself alive has just got a little bit more interesting.

Anyone else wondering who the poor person is, whose job it is to walk backwards everywhere with a huge fan, so Delaney’s coat never stops billowing? It’s quite something, isn’t it. Is there such a job as a ‘fan-handler’? No idea.

There are 4 Comments

scottss's picture

Yet ANOTHER period piece from the BBC and it's hardly pulse racing stuff. Hardy grunts his way through. Emote Mr Hardy, emote! I'll watch to the end but hardly one to recommend...

Penelope pitstop's picture

Tom hardy may not emote! But by god he grunts like a good 'un
This drama has been riddled with filth on many levels yet we are still waiting Tom.....Get that nightshirt off man
Dump the sister
I'm free

walterwhite's picture

By Walter White

With its hipster beards, prolific tattoos, gay orgies, dope dens, spiv tycoons, drunken whores and casual, visceral violence, you could be forgiven for thinking Taboo is set in modern-day Shoreditch, East London.

The parallels with the Regency period of the early 19th century, from where Taboo draws its inspiration, don’t end there. The British were burning down the White House, which, given half a chance, anti-Trump protestors marching through London would gleefully put a match to, with the Quiff-in-Chief atop the pyre.

And the City institutions currently targeted by anti-globalisation protestors are the direct heirs to the Hon. East India Company, James Delaney’s nemesis in the TV series, whose trading tentacles spread across the globe, spinning a vast web of wealth and influence and, some would argue, corruption on an industrial scale.

Whether the producers of Taboo were deliberately seeking leftish political symbolism is debatable. As a straightforward drama, it is a dark and disturbing odyssey of bloody revenge driven by the compelling screen presence of Tom Hardy as adventurer James Delaney, believed lost at sea who returns to London to claim his inheritance from his shipping mogul father.

The East India Company wants what he is bequeathed: a strategically-valuable strip of land called Nootka Sound in North America as a platform to expand their shipping routes -- at any cost. Delaney stands in its way, and he’s not going quietly.

Delaney survives an assassination attempt, only to see the ship he’s commissioned to sail the Atlantic reduced to matchsticks in an explosion. Breaking the surface of this fog-and-fury epic are secrets probably better left hidden in the swirling depths: how James’s mother tried to drown him as a baby; his incestuous lust for his half-sister Zilpha Geary (Oona Chaplin); his psychopathic rage so demonic he can rip heart from the chest of his betrayer and casually toss it to an associate as he would to a street dog.

Within the archives of the East India Company lies an even murkier mystery. Of a foundering slave ship whose hold was deliberately nailed down so its hapless captives were left to drown.

Atmospheric, brooding, Taboo is classy TV. London in the era of the Prince Regent, heir to George 111, is brilliantly brought to life in all its debauched squalor. It makes Dickens look like a Christmas carol.

scottss's picture

still a poor man's Shirley Conran. Now, Tom Hardy in lace...hmmmm....Tom should get some tips from the cross-dressers...