Taboo: Season 1 - TV Reviews (2024)

Freshly unique, gloriously offensive, and delightfully vicious with superb costume design, an unbelievably talented cast, and a riveting story that thrives on reeling its audience in.

Full Review | Original Score: 4.5/5 | Aug 30, 2019

Not even often-stunning performances... can dig Taboo out of its messy, overwrought darkness.

Full Review | Oct 19, 2018

The Hardys have created a period piece with a grim, noir feel, and ballsy execution. There are plenty of betrayals, murders, conspiracies and a clash of primitive and modern western values.

Full Review | Aug 24, 2018

The actor, also the creator of the series, has a hypnotic presence halfway between a rhinoceros and a peaco*ck. [Full Review in Spanish]

Full Review | Jul 10, 2018

... an amazing Tom Hardy in one of his usual genius performances... [Full review in Spanish]

Full Review | Original Score: 5/5 | Jan 16, 2018

Tom Hardy continues his uncontested reign as the most enthralling young actor currently alive.

Full Review | Jan 5, 2018

As a showcase for Hardy's considerable acting chops, Taboo is passable, but once you peel away [Tom] Hardy's detailed performance you begin to realize that there's almost nothing to the character he's playing.

Full Review | Original Score: B- | Dec 29, 2017

The formula of the show is well set: uncanny impressions, relentless passive aggression and a surprising amount of pathos, this time all soused in vino tinto.

Full Review | Dec 28, 2017

If you could fathom what Hardy was growling, Delaney's closing run-in with Jonathan Pryce's East India Company boss suddenly put things on a knife-edge, promising just the sort of conflict you'd return for.

Full Review | Original Score: 3/5 | Dec 28, 2017

I want to be kind about the series because it looked fantastic. It had, as I say, great lines. There has not been such a blissful collective display of character acting for a while: the best supporting actor gong goes to the lot of them.

Full Review | Original Score: 4/5 | Dec 27, 2017

For not giving up on historical dramas, even if not perfecting the genre, Tom Hardy's Taboo deserves your attention. Give it some.

Full Review | Original Score: 3.5/5 | Dec 27, 2017

At the very least, with all the period detailing and potential for Back-Stabbing and Lies, it's filling the Game of Thrones void. And, seriously. Tom Hardy. Watch it for him alone. He's spectacular.

Full Review | Oct 11, 2017

...call it Peaky Blinders: The Early Years, or Boardwalk Empire 1814 if you need a quick shorthand...

Full Review | Sep 11, 2017

Tom Hardy delivers brooding silences and colorful dialogue with relish.

Full Review | Sep 6, 2017

... if you have ever wished to know what you get when too many alpha males gather in a room, perhaps this is it.

Full Review | Original Score: 2/5 | Sep 1, 2017

This is the trouble with the show overall: It's just not clear, even after three episodes, what the fascinating James Keziah Delaney wants.

Full Review | Aug 28, 2017

[Taboo] silently bullies you into a reverence it probably doesn't deserve.

Full Review | Aug 11, 2017

From the incest and exorcism scenes to the gunpowder plots, Tom Hardy's grubby, grimy, Georgian period drama is bonkers to the last.

Full Review | Jun 28, 2017

The three episodes of the show broadcast thus far have given viewers enough reason to keep returning, if for no other reason than simply to take in Hardy's smouldering screen persona.

Full Review | May 31, 2017

The glimpses of London low life in the opening episode are tougher and more squalid than Dickens -- and not a wholesome family watch: Poldark it ain't.

Full Review | Original Score: 4/5 | Apr 25, 2017