Taboo – Analysis

Taboo is a BBC 1 drama aired on Sundays at 9pm. It stars Tom Hardy as James Keziah Delaney, ab adventurer returning to London from Africa, who was believed to be dead. He returns to avenge his fathers death and keep his shipping company running against rivals.

The show has been compared to ‘Downton Abbey’ and ‘Wolf Hall’ in regards to the fact that they tend to be historically accurate and ‘the glory of taboo is that it is not’(Sarah Hughes, 2017 – The Guardian). It has been described as ‘a heady stew of gothic revenge tale and colonial critique that draws on everything from Charles Dickins and Wilkie Collins to H Rider Haggard and Joseph Conrad’ (Sarah Hughes, 2017 – The Guardian). This shows that Taboo is diverse enough to appeal to a mass audience as it has different similarities to a variety of authors and stories.

The show has been critiqued as a dark one, within 15 minutes, there was ‘a reference to incest’ and ‘ghostly witches’ (McGurk, 2017). This shows that Taboo is not for everyone and not everyone will enjoy its disturbing references, but for those who don’t mind it, it’s a good show to watch as it is very engaging and thrilling.

The show is co-produced by BBC and FX which means that the show may reach a wider audience than just the BBC audience. So the fact that the show has been co-produced with an american company shows that it may be more flamboyant than the normally reserved BBC One channel so the fact that it is so dark and use the N-word, could be partially due to FX. However, currently the BBC have a show called ‘Gunpowder’ which us quite dark as it displayed proper medieval torture such as being hung, drawn and quartered. So the BBC could be taking a more shocking turn to its historical drama’s in order to shock the audience and draw them in.

References

Sarah Hughes. (2017). Naysayers be damned! Tom Hardy’s Taboo is a work of Wicker Man genius. Available: https://www.theguardian.com/tv-and-radio/2017/feb/23/naysayers-be-damned-tom-hardys-taboo-is-a-work-of-wicker-man-genius. Last accessed 12 Nov 2017.

Stuart McGurk. (2017). Everything you need to know about Taboo, the new BBC Tom Hardy drama. Available: http://www.gq-magazine.co.uk/article/everything-you-need-to-know-about-new-bbc-tom-hardy-drama-taboo. Last accessed 12 Nov 2017.