A carefully plotted second episode saw our man with the fearsome growl and the sharp understanding of geopolitical niceties gather ever more enemies – and receive dire warnings of impending doom from practically everyone he came into contact with. It made for an increasingly tense hour, though it must be said that the whole thing still threatens to collapse into parody at any moment. Personally I’m ok with all the grunting and striding and muttering, but I can see why others might roll their eyes.
“Are you more comfortable with business than learning, James?”
It certainly seems so, given the way Delaney Jr ignored every piece of advice he was offered this week. Continuing to poke the hornet’s nest was only ever going to end one way, and thus the hour finished with James lying in an alleyway with a knife in his belly – having gruesomely demonstrated that the rumours about his liking for human flesh might have rather more than an inkling of truth to them.
In fairness, he did warn us last week that he was going to do “very foolish things” – and one of the things I like about young Delaney is this mocking self-awareness of his flaws. (See also his sardonic “human kindness” response to Atticus’s question about the smallest thing he saw – don’t tell me this show doesn’t have a sense of humour). Those flashes of mockery were particularly welcome given that this is the sort of programme – like Steven Knight’s other period piece, Peaky Blinders – in which everyone plays their cards very close to their chest.
Thus, we might assume that the dead assassin was sent by the East India Company, but he could easily have been employed by Helga, by Zilpha or her husband, or by the mysterious American contingent. At least we got confirmation that Sir Stuart Strange was right and Delaney had met with the Americans at some point. That said, I wouldn’t assume he was working with them, more that he took what he needed for his own secret masterplan. Our man is very much an individualist – and that’s the ultimate point of this show. On one side you have the East India Company, so powerful it sits above the control of the Prince Regent, and on the other you have Delaney, who wants the freedom to trade in his own name … and in Nootka Sound has the means to do so. Thus the key quote is Thoyt’s justification – “Do you think all who submit are evil? No, we are submitting to the way the world has become.” Delaney stands out because he has no interest in becoming a cog in the machine, no matter how well oiled.
“My name is Lorna Delaney, and I have proof that I’m his widow.”
As if James didn’t have enough to deal with – the might of the East India Company (“when you left London the East India Company was a trading company; now it is God Almighty”), the possible wrath of the Americans and his own sister massed against him – we also learned that the late Horace Delaney had taken time out from boozing and burning fires on the foreshore to get married in Dublin. The lucky lady is an actress by trade, and clearly no pushover. She’s also played by the excellent Jessie Buckley, who was the best thing in the BBC’s recent adaptation of War and Peace.
“I’m lying in the ocean like a whale and no one in my privy council will raise a musket barrel.”
We met a number of new characters this week, including Stephen Graham’s phenomenally tattooed murderer-for-hire Atticus, Jason Watkins as the mysterious East India Company-hating Solomon Coop and Michael Kelly (aka House of Cards’ Doug Stamper) as the US surgeon and spy Dumbarton. But pride of place goes to an almost unrecognisable Mark Gatiss in his brief but memorable turn as the port-sodden, gout-ridden and nightmare-suffering Prince Regent. Is Taboo trying to beat the Game of Thrones record for character actors popping up in unusual places?
Additional notes
• Oona Chaplin continues to do a great deal with a small amount of screen time. The nervy yet self-possessed Zilpha intrigues me; there’s always the sense that she’s laughing at everyone behind her perfect facade.
• I also like the contrast between Zilpha’s outwardly civilised world with its music recitals and tasteful drawing rooms and her brother’s blood-and-gore-filled existence.
• Speaking of which, the cheek-biting scene was interesting – and I do wonder where they’re going with this (hopefully not down the old “he developed a taste for human flesh during his time in Africa” route, though that does seem a possibility).
• Some reviewers in the US took Helga’s proposition to be a ludicrous reaffirmation of the unearthly charms of Tom Hardy (“no woman can resist him”) but I actually think it was more complicated than that: she was using sex to try and distract him from finding out what she knew – and he was well aware of it.
• I would really like a big stick like Sir Stuart Strange’s with which to emphasise my anger at minions.
• “I have no love for the theatre”. No James, of course you don’t. That’s why you stride everywhere in a billowing coat or flounce around on a white horse.
Most magnificently brooding Tom Hardy moment
This can only go to the scene in which a naked, tattooed James practised his own version of feng shui to clear the bad spirits of slavery from his newly purchased ship.
Most fantastically baroque threat of the week
Not so much a threat as a prediction, but I was rather taken with Brace’s declaration that “What I do have are coins enough to bury you, prayer beads not enough to get you to heaven and hashish enough to ease my grieving when the East India Company slit your throat, which of course they will.” Now that’s how to tell a man to turn back from the destructive path he’s hellbent on.
What did you think? Can James hang on to Nootka Sound with his enemies circling? What does Lorna want and how dangerous is she? And if you were going to exorcise the demons of the past, what kind of ceremony would you perform? As ever, all speculation and no spoilers welcome below…
