Remember that time Tom Hardy got naked? Which time, you ask, the time in the short film or all the times he was in his underpants on MySpace? Or some other time I missed because Tom Hardy seems always to be getting naked? No, this most recent time, when he got naked in the English countryside instead of blowing Oscar with Leo. If you’ll remember, that was for a new TV series called Taboo, which Hardy is co-producing with Ridley Scott for BBC One and FX. While I don’t care about Tom Hardy’s general nakedity, yesterday the trailer for Taboo was released and it looks pretty goddamn awesome.
The trailer is more interested in setting, tone, and Tom Hardy looking cool in top hats and tattoos, so the plot is a little obtuse, but it seems to be about a guy in Regency England coming home after being presumed dead, maybe to get revenge for something? He’s got beef with the East India Company, and maybe it all ties into the slave trade somehow? There are some ridiculous beats, particularly the guy shrieking, “You will see, Delaney, this legacy is your death sentence!” That seems a bit much. And the generic rock music over the title card at the end is not a choice I enjoy, so I hope that’s just a temporary track until the real theme is available.
But that aside, I’m SUPER into how this looks. All of the locations are absolutely gorgeous, and oh thank GOD, Hardy opted for an intelligible accent, and not one of his Mrfffedy-mrrffff grumble-voices that renders him incomprehensible sometimes (see also: The Revenant, The Dark Knight Rises, Peaky Blinders). I also really like the part where he talks about “the evil that you do”. Man, when Hardy’s locked in, he is one of the most compelling actors on the planet.
Leonardo DiCaprio and Tom Hardy are both nominated for Oscars for The Revenant. While Leo has been begging on his knees for Oscar and reminding everyone that he was like, REALLY COLD for a while, Tom Hardy has been making a TV show. He might be an asshole or whatever, but damned if that doesn’t make me like him.
