It looks like we could be set for a massive time jump when the period drama eventually returns.
It’s already been more than four years since Tom Hardy’s period drama Taboo aired on BBC One, but it sounds as though ambitious plans are still afoot for a follow-up.
Hardy’s other commitments – including his work on the upcoming Venom 2 – have significantly delayed the follow-up season but he claims that the show is still “really, really important” to him.
And it looks like the series could go in some crazy new directions when it eventually does return, with Hardy teasing that several ideas were still on the table.
“It’s taken a lot of thinking, because I really enjoyed the first one and I want to be really fulfilled by the second one,” he told Esquire.
“We’re still playing with ideas: you could go linear, a continuation of time, or we could drop prior to London or we could quantum-leap through time! I don’t know whether to go orthodox – there’s a series of that already written – but I don’t know if that’s the right way to go.”
The first series, set in 1814, told the story of James Delaney, an Englishman who returned to London with 14 stolen diamonds following his father’s death, after more than a decade in Africa.
Written by Hardy alongside his father Chips and Peaky Blinders creator Steven Knight, the series explored the corruption of 19th century London from the perspective of the Delaney family – but it looks like we could be set for a change of scenery in season two.
“In my head I was thinking, ‘Let’s say they get to America, they get to Canada, fast-forward to 1968, the Tet Offensive, the Vietnam War, look at the CIA, the Viet Cong, the French in Saigon….” he said. “Take the Delaney family tree out in the jungle, and recreate the same family dynamics that were happening in London but with new people, thinking about how history and corruption repeats itself.
“It’s still Taboo, it’s still period, but it’s the ’60s,” he added. “There’s something fun about that. Or do we go back to the 1800s? The Napoleonic Wars? The American War of Independence?’ But nothing’s crossed my heart and mind and desk where I’ve gone ‘That’s it!’ so I’m hanging fire.”
Whatever avenue Hardy eventually decides on, it seems safe to say that Taboo season two can’t come soon enough.