Taboo: Episode 5 review!

Well holy hell, I didn’t see that coming (in yesterday's episode of Taboo) - not so much the survival of both duellists, but more the manner in which it happened. First, there was another spectacularly staged opening sequence in which Thorne (Jefferson Hall)  and Delaney (Tom Hardy) were ferried to an island in the Thames for their showdown.

Then, after the spiel of rules and regulations that put Steven Knight’s research front and centre had been recounted, the duel began. Thorne shot first but misfired (but was it down to him).

Delaney, for his part, elected to shoot Thorne’s Second, a Company agent who had neglected to load Thorne’s gun (Delaney’s death would have handed Nootka Sound to the Americans, of course), rather than his opponent. While Lorna Bow (Jessie Buckley) feared Delaney would be sent to the gallows for the killing, Thorne’see lack of gratitude towards his magnanimous opponent was pretty galling.

With every week that passes on Taboo, James Delaney comes to further resemble Clint Eastwood’s Man with No Name where he is playing his enemies off against each other and predicting their manoeuvres with uncanny accuracy.

As things stand, the Crown is going after the Company on two fronts. First, for supposed negligence in allowing the saltpetre heist to succeed; second, through the altogether unlikely figure of George Chichester (Lucian Msamati).

The black campaigner, working for the Sons of Africa anti-slavery group, was demanding an investigation into the sinking of the slaveship in which Delaney has such an interest, believing the Company scuppered it deliberately (presumably for insurance reasons). Stuart Strange’s (Jonathan Pryce) panicked response to the news suggested Mr Chichester might be onto something.

As for the Americans, the closest Delaney has to big-hitting allies, they remain as profoundly untrustworthy as ever, demanding Delaney assign the Nootka treaty before leaving London under their ‘protection’. It’s a commitment he was understandably reluctant to make, given they tried to have him bumped off in the previous episode. His own gang, too, remained shiftless and unreliable, a rogue’s gallery Delaney prefers to rule by fear (“I am inside your heads, gentlemen - always”).

Gradually, though, that maddening opacity is clearing, thanks largely to the interventions of Lorna. While Delaney burnt his father’s documents, he told her about the history of Nootka Sound (snapped up from American Indians for “gunpowder and lies”) and his mother’s grim fate, bought for beads by his father then packed off to an asylum when she wouldn’t conform.

 spite of another enjoyable cameo from Mark Gatiss’s George IV (this week, gorging himself on an ostrich egg), Tom Hollander continued to waltz off with the best lines, being very rude about the French and wondering of Lorna, “could a chemist call on her, for tea or something?” Otherwise, he spent the episode more or less chained to the cauldron, stirring away at the saltpetre and guano to make gunpowder alongside Delaney’s poor estranged son.

In spite of Cholmondeley’s warnings, Delaney seemed keen to cut all possible corners to get the gunpowder made more quickly as the Americans became more urgent in their demands. It’s fair to say that consequences could be catastrophic.

All good, intriguing stuff, then, thickening the plot with a welcome dash of pace. So pity poor Oona Chaplin, still with precious little to do other than writhe and shriek (in agony or ecstasy), be beaten by her husband (in scenes of violence that were hard to stomach even by the standards of this show) and fend off her brother, both of whom regard her more as possession than person.

The exorcism instructed by Thorne doesn’t seem to have worked, judging by her trancelike, swiftly aborted bid to stab him, presumably under Delaney’s influence.

I’m not quite clear what the point was of Delaney threatening the horserider tailing him, other than once again underlining his preternatural powers of observation and plethora of deeply held grudges. Nor am I clear how Delaney knew the identity of the cohort who had threatened to sell him out (again, beyond his hither to unimpeachable instincts), especially given that the East India Company remains blissfully ignorant of his spy in their camp.

But all in all, this was a stronger, more purposeful episode than we’ve had for a while, with more violence you would not expect to see on the bbc, new director Anders Engström running with Kristoffer Nyholm’s distinctive visuals and weaving a deeply seductive spell for this episode.