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Review: Dead men tell many tales in ‘Taboo’

YOUTUBE.COM Tom Hardy stars in ‘Taboo’ on FX, which premiered Tuesday night.

Dead men coming home, strange languages, secrets both at home and halfway around the world – the new FX series “Taboo” has a lot to hook viewers with during its premiere episode.

Whether or not the miniseries created by Tom Hardy and Ridley Scott can sustain its mysterious narrative for the duration of its eight episodes without veering into the territory of the cliched — or the absurd — remains to be seen, but its first 90 minutes are a positive, visually enticing prospect.

It’s 1814, and Hardy is James Keziah Delaney, a man who was thought to be dead after leaving London a decade earlier for what was then the dangerous and unknown continent of Africa. But somehow he has learned that his father has died, and he appears at the funeral – causing jaws to drop and whispers to pepper the church. “My god, it’s a dead man,” someone mutters.

It seems to be a central plot point that whispers and rumors about Delaney have proliferated in his absence, with many having heard of his supposed demise — he had boarded a slave ship in Africa that was bound for Antigua, which sunk soon after departing — but spreading stories nonetheless that he had survived and plunged into a life of … well, we’re actually not sure yet. The word “savage” is applied to him more than once; “awful and unnatural” are words used to describe the rumors about his activities since his disappearance. The stories are still somewhat vague, but whether that’s meant to be the delicacy of discussing such matters or it’s a weak point in the script is unclear.

There are other minor twists and turns as the premiere episode begins to weave its tapestry of a plot, but we eventually learn that Delaney’s return has shaken up a much larger plan involving his father’s will and what has been left to him: a small, seemingly unimportant sliver of land called Nootka Sound that’s halfway around the world, on the west coast of the fledgling United States. For the purposes of avoiding spoilers, I’ll leave it unexplained why Delaney seems both unsurprised by and fiercely protective of his inheritance, which – to virtually everyone else – seems useless.

For his part, whatever he experienced in Africa certainly seems to have driven Delaney to a dark place. He speaks an unknown language at his father’s funeral, flicking red powder into the open grave before using it to draw one vividly-colored streak down his own cheek. He has flashbacks of the slave ship – images of driving rain and hands clutching at the metal grate dividing deck and slave hold – but also glimpses of what can only be described as a witch or a voodoo priestess, her body painted white but her bared teeth black. We don’t know if she’s a vision or a memory, but we know that his past certainly haunts him – in fact, that it almost possesses him. In one of his most disturbing visions, he’s confronted by the memory of a towering black man, wrists shackled and body drenched in blood. “I have no fear to feed you,” Delaney hisses at the specter as it approaches him. “And I have work to do.” In an instant, the figure is gone.

Whatever his mind holds, however, Delaney seems to politely restrain himself when in public to the extent that he believes is prudent; he knows his reputation and does nothing to dismiss it, almost reveling in the mystery it affords him. It’s a genteel madness, if there is such a thing, and there’s no better actor for it than Hardy. Like his role in 2015’s “Mad Max: Fury Road,” he’s gruff-voiced, taciturn in speech and physically expressive in a way that other actors could never pull off with success.

The rest of the cast is just as well-appointed, with the stellar Jonathan Pryce as Sir Stuart Strange, head of the prestigious East India Trading Company, and Oona Chaplin as Delaney’s fragile half-sister, Zilpha. For the moment, Chaplin is more ornamental than anything, but given an uneasy interaction between her and Delaney – and the not-so-veiled insinuation that their shared past is, shall we say, intense – I expect her to be a much more significant presence in episodes to come. It’s interesting to note that the cast also serves as a reunion of sorts for several characters from HBO’s smash hit “Game of Thrones,” bringing together Chaplin (Talisa Maegyr), Pryce (the High Sparrow) and Roger Ashton-Griffiths (Mace Tyrell).

Will “Taboo” have the legs to carry its own weight for another seven episodes? I hope so. Delaney assures us that he knows “things about the dead,” and I, for one, want to see what they are.

“Taboo” airs at 10 p.m. Tuesdays on FX.

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