They’ve already worked together on Locke and are planning to collaborate for the second series of BBC drama Peaky Blinders. Now it appears that Tom Hardy and writer/director Steven Knight want to maintain their working partnership further, with the Beeb announcing that they’ve roped in Ridley Scott’s services as producer for a new series called Taboo.
Set in 1813, Taboo follows James Keziah Delaney (Hardy), a rogue adventurer who returns from Africa with 14 ill-gotten diamonds to seek vengeance after the death of his father. Refusing to sell the family business to the East India Company, he sets out to build his own trade and shipping empire and finds himself playing a dangerous game with two warring nations, Britain and America.
“This man, James Delaney, is a deeply flawed and deeply troubled human being. His greatest struggle will be against the East India Company which, throughout the nineteenth century, was the equivalent of the CIA, the NSA and the biggest, baddest multi-national corporation on earth, all rolled into one self righteous, religiously motivated monolith,” is how Steven Knight views his new antihero.
Based on an idea by Hardy and his father Chips, and created by Knight, eight episodes of Taboo will kick off shooting next January for transmission in 2015. Locke, meanwhile, will be on our screens on April 18.