Ah yes, we didn’t get to Taboo (BBC1, Sunday) last week because of The Voice and How Do You Solve a Problem Like Gary Barlow (AKA Let It Shine). And because I wasn’t entirely sure what it was all about or what the hell was going on. Accompanied by a spooky soundtrack, James Delaney (Tom Hardy, being menacing with his voice and the bottom half of his face because the top half was invisible in the shade of his top hat) rode into Regency London on a white horse and put the fear of God into people.
Only his half-sister Zilpha (Oona Chaplin) seemed pleased to see him, maybe because she also used to be his girlfriend; I assumed the boy was the son/nephew and that incest might have something to do with the title. Sir Stuart Strange (splendid from Jonathan Pryce) of the East India Company (boo) was especially displeased to see him, because Delaney now owns a strategically invaluable piece of land in British Columbia. That’s not where he’s back from, though; he’s been in Africa, where all sorts of bad stuff happened, possibly involving slaves and drownings. He may also have a connection with the dead.
So kind of Dickens meets Conrad meets A Fistful of Dollars meets Roots meets Sixth Sense meets Peaky Blinders (whose creator Steven Knight co-created and wrote this with Tom Hardy and his father Edward “Chips” Hardy), if you were pitching it.
Right, so Delaney, now the target of a murder plot, digs up his stash of diamonds, and buys a haunted ship. A cockney geezer called Atticus, the only person brave enough to stand up to Delaney, nicks his horse, but only because he wants some information about African fauna. Hang on, is Atticus my four-year-old in disguise? Daddy, what’s the biggest animal in Africa? Is it an elephant? And the smallest? Ant? Except that my son doesn’t have a compass tattooed right across his head, yet. Is that so Atticus can find his way home to the East End?
Sir Stuart, who has already ordered Delaney’s murder and is convinced he is working for the Americans, is getting more and more apoplectic. And here, with his stuffed zebra, is the Prince Regent himself (Mark Gatiss, given a double helping of gout in makeup), taking some interest in his country’s conflict with the US, in spite of a sore arse and a dodgy toe.
Atticus torches someone else’s ship, sparking more flashbacks. And Helga the German whorehouse madam says she would very much like to do business with him, “but I would like you inside of me, Mr Delaney”.
What?! Did she really say that? (Goes back, checks, because Taboo is quite mumbly, as well as flickery.) Yes, she does – wants to do business and the business, even though Delaney just interrupted a “business meeting” she was having with another fella. It wouldn’t be the first time with Delaney, either; she had his virginity, way back, before Africa.
Some of the dialogue does make you wince. It’s stiflingly male: Chaplin has hardly said a word so far; the only other women are sex workers. It’s portentous as hell. Hardy Acts with a capital A, with extra swagger. Often it feels as though the whole thing is just a vessel to show off his talents, his ability to own a screen, even when he’s using only half his face (that hat is his real co-star).
And yet he can – own a screen – and would you dare try to take it off him? The East India Company stuff is interesting; were they really that evil? It is seductive and atmospheric. I am enjoying it, even if I still don’t really know what’s going on. Such as what’s the red stuff between the planks on the boat? Something bad, I’m thinking, possibly to do with death, and Africa.
I’m not a fan of the celebrity travelogue, but I am of Andrew Flintoff. Freddie Down Under (Sky1, Sunday) might, as Downton Abbey’s Jim Carter says in his voiceover, have a paper-thin premise (Freddie travels round Australia in a green van with a mate; they will be doing some barbecuing, but not yet). But the former cricketer/boxer/pedaloer’s blunt charm and honesty make it better than bearable.
Best line – on his reasons for going on Australia’s I’m a Celebrity … Get Me Out of Here!: “Easiest money you’ll ever earn. I didn’t go on a personal voyage, or try to find myself. I wanted a new kitchen.”
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