Hello my Movivaures 🙂 I hope you had great weekend.

Today I want to talk about Taboo, Tom Hardy’s latest TV show released in 2017.  Maybe you are thinking, “why is she talking about this show now”, or even “what? Tom Hardy was on a TV show from 2017?”.

To be honest with you, as crazy as I am about TV shows and Movies, I don’t have enough time to watch everything I want and I’m not always aware of every release. However, I had heard about Taboo a few months before it actually aired on TV, when I wrote my article about Tom Hardy (you can find it here). Unfortunately, I never had the time to watch it before and I forgot about it for a while, until a friend asked me if it was worth a shot.

As I love helping my friends and giving them advice on what to watch according to their needs and cravings of the moment, I used myself as an experiment. Yes, I totally binge watched Taboo. And you know what I told my friend afterwards? That is totally worth a shot!

I’ve been writing articles about TV shows for a while now, and I’ve been watching them a long time before that. With the huge amount of show released every year, I’m totally convinced that, in order to survive in this ruthless world of critics, views, marketing and budget, a show MUST convince a majority of viewers in the first 30 minutes of the pilot. Of course, some shows as Breaking Bad or Game of thrones did’nt respect this rule, but there’s always an exception and not every show has this kind of luck.

In any case, you can be sure that Taboo intrigued me from the beginning, even though I had forced myself not to look at the synopsis. Tom Hardy was a reason enough for me to watch this show, and also the fact that Ridley Scott was one of the producers (yes I know, I like the big names of the industry). However, I had the certitude that it wouldn’t be enough. That this show needed to be more than only a great casting in order to be good. Furthermore, I was kind of suprised  not to have heard more about this show, even though it had enough prerequisites to make a huge marketing campaing on it (comme on guys, TOM HARDY!).

But without any further, lets get into the heart of the Show. Without spoiling anything I’ll tell you just the situation where we found ourselves at the beginning of the first episode : James Delaney (alias Tom Hardy) comes back to London to attend the funeral of his father. Everyone is surprise, and not always in the good way, to see him again as he was believed dead for many years now. His return will not only surprise a bunch of people but literally shake their comfortable lifes. I’m not saying anything more about the storyline, as I believe watching this show is the only way you could really understand the deepness of every character and story.

However, what I can say is that this show enters a kind of new genre between drama, horror, historical show and thriller. Is like a mix between the coolness of the characters from Peaky Blinders, with the gothic side from Penny Dreadful and the suspense from the Alienist. The story is sometimes complicated but very well written, without gaps. The characters are sometimes inhuman and other times  the very representation of humanity, in all its decay and glory. Everything seem gross but in a beautiful way and that is all the art of this show. Is like loving something you hate. A story full of taboos and immoral behavior mixed with values such as friendship, loyalty, love. Even your own emotions are in conflict while watching this show and I can truly say I find that amazing as in todays world, we are less and less amazed by what’s happening around us.

In short, you really need to watch this show to really appreciate and understand Tom Hardy’s talent in and behind the camera. His performance, as well as the performance of the other actors, are breathtaking. Critics at the time of the release were very positive, but this show has not recieved, in my opinion, the acclaim it deserves. Fortunately, another two seasons (at least) were confirmed by Steven Knight  (the creator of Peaky Blinders and the brain behind Taboo’s storyline) and we will soon know the release date ! 

That’s all for my review on Taboo. I hope you liked it and that it will make you want to watch the show if it’s not already done. In all cases, feel free to give me your opinion on this great show !

See you soon, on the Movievaures