![]() ![]() His father, now dead, was apparently an explorer who married a native woman, Delaney’s mother, in Canada, and whose only legacy to his children was a small piece of disputed land on Vancouver Island, Nootka Sound. In the show’s first episode, he returns to London after an absence of ten years, during which he was presumed dead in Africa. (The show’s title seems to refer to a number of his more subversive habits, including the aforementioned flesh-eating and a sexual relationship with his half-sister.) Hardy’s performance includes a distinctly odd vocal affect that sometimes comes across as half-Bane, half-BBC World Service, but it at least (if unintentionally) provides some moments of levity in an otherwise grim universe.ĭelaney as a character was created by Hardy and his father, the writer Edward “Chips” Hardy, and shepherded into existence by Steven Knight, the veteran British writer and director (he created the similarly violent Peaky Blinders, and directed Hardy in the critically acclaimed 2013 drama Locke). Hardy, though, does the lion’s share of keeping the audience intrigued, with Delaney coming across as a kind of Regency-era Jason Bourne, equipped with improbable super-strength, maniacal cunning, and a general disdain for the mores even of impolite society. Taboo is infinitely gruesomer than most of the 19th-century dramas that arrive by way of the BBC, but it’s respectably ambitious, and studded with luminaries from both sides of the Atlantic. ![]() And, this being a costume drama, he does it all while stalking through cobbled streets in a beaver-fur top hat. In one scene, he rips out the jugular of an enemy with his teeth. ![]() So John Delaney, the focal character in FX’s new drama Taboo, feels a bit like the apotheosis of Hardyian roles: He’s the distillation of machismo, a terrifying hulk of a man who returns to London seemingly from death, intent on salvaging his father’s squandered shipping business. Highlights of his performances from the last ten years include an infamously violent felon with an unexpected passion for drawing in Bronson, a brutal mixed-martial arts fighter estranged from his abusive father in Warrior, and a terrifying supervillain devoted to a small child in The Dark Knight Rises. Nobody excels at playing ferocious psychopaths with a sensitive side quite like Tom Hardy. ![]()
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