Taboo - TV Series

Taboo (2017)  - TV SERIES

Released this year on BBC 1, Taboo was created by by Tom Hardy, his dad and Steven Knight. The TV Series narrative is based on true events and is about a man named James Keziah Delaney, who returns to 1814 London after 10 years in Africa to discover that he has been left a mysterious legacy by his father. Driven to wage war on those who have wronged him, Delaney finds himself in a face-off against the East Indie Company, whilst playing a dangerous game between two warring nations, Britain and America.

I thought the series as a whole was a fantastic and gripping experience in many aspects, the narrative had a great complexity to it and you never felt comfortable when Tom Hardy's character was on screen, which I found to be really intriguing. This was displayed through his lack of dialogue, his costume design and his general persona. 

The colour tones within this series were extremely consistent and portrayed the 19th Century perfectly, or as how I would of pictured it in my head. The blacks, dark greys, grey, just the general lack of highly saturated colours, and through just that you can feel how it would of been like to live through that period of history. 

Definitely in one aspect of the directing of this series which I found to be quite influential was creating such depth in the aesthetics of the locations. Creating such a world and making the audience believe it, unfortunately I was not able to capture this in one of my first scenes however in the second I believe I captured a relatively believable hotel room. Not only this but the awkwardness of the main protagonist/anti-hero (could be argued) is something that I wanted to try an emulate with my piece, to have my villain play awkwardly, and to reinforce it with extreme close ups to create such atmosphere.

Overall with having almost completed this unit, i've been able to fathom actually how much time, effort and cognitive function is put into directing, an so when I now watch series such as this one it really does make me appreciate the viewing a whole lot more.