‘Taboo’: Tom Hardy Is Scary

Photo: FX

A dark, grimy melodrama filled with menace, designed to raise hackles and grue, Taboo is a showcase for Tom Hardy, as designed by Hardy and collaborators including producer Ridley Scott and writer Steven Knight (Peaky Blinders). Set in the early 19th century, it features Hardy as James Delaney, a Londoner who returns home after years spent in Africa, scarred and filthy, only to find that he has an inheritance. Delaney is in the plum position of being the new owner of a spit of land that proves to be a crucial piece of property that’s a trade route to China. It’s much sought after by the U.S. and by Britain’s East India Co., which is presented as all-powerful — the Amazon and Facebook of its day.

Related: Winter TV Preview: The Scoop on 29 Shiny New Shows

But if you think Taboo sounds like an old Brit version of Showtime’s Billions, with clever people squabbling over power, you’re wrong. With his exotic tattoos, growly voice, mystical visions, and rude manner, Delaney is a rough customer, and the executives at East India plot nothing less than his violent death to procure the rights to Delaney’s inheritance, called Nootka Sound. Assassins are hired to dispatch Delaney, but he wields a cunning curved blade with brass knuckles for protection, and doesn’t mind spilling blood.

Many parts of Taboo are shot in dark rooms or in dark alleys during dark nights. Dialogue runs to descriptions of Delaney as “an adventurer of very poor appearance” and boasts by Delaney that “I am a very dangerous man.” There is a history of sex between Delaney and his half-sister Zilpha, played by Oona Chaplin, and it’s a measure of Delaney’s ferocious craziness that semi-incest seems totally in keeping with his character.

Hardy, perhaps best known as the rumbling villain Bane in The Dark Knight Rises and a would-be Leonardo DiCaprio-killer in The Revenant, portrays cunning, ruthlessness, and the crazy very well. The supporting cast is excellent: Any show that uses the great actor Jonathan Pryce as a venal businessman who welcomes visitors to his office with a snapped-out “F*** off” has my attention.

Related: Winter TV Preview: The Scoop on 25 Returning Shows

But the true villain of the piece is not so much a person as a business: The East India Co., a very real historic entity. Thus we have the pleasure of rooting against greedy fat cats who prove they’ll go to any length to acquire land. Delaney’s goals amount to the literalization of a cliché: In return for the rights to Nootka Sound, he seeks a monopoly on the Chinese tea trade, or as he says, “all the tea in China.”

I thought I was heartily sick of gloomy, gritty TV shows, but engaging ones can’t help but pull me in. After watching three episodes of Taboo, I think I’m officially in.

Taboo airs Tuesdays at 10 p.m. on FX.