Taboo, like “Fargo” before it, is an original, highly imaginative series from FX. Here, the Hardys and Knight blend a tale of intrigue set against the supernatural. The drama is eerie, even haunting.

While Taboo may prioritize style over depth, the result is an addictive, slow-burn story, and a damn entertaining journey.

Hardy's showmanship is nearly matched by many of his costars, particularly Jonathan Pryce as the head of the villainous East India Company, a prototype for the corporatization currently eating this world alive. ... Yet, there's something conventionally nagging about Taboo: The series never entirely tumbles down the rabbit hole with its characters into the mouth of chaos and madness, as the best expressionist TV shows do.

FX dramas are invariably gritty, but the mood here seems organic to the story, in the way it did, say, on "Deadwood." Whether Taboo can rise to that level remains to be seen, but based on first impressions, Hardy's TV return is pretty hardy indeed.

Taboo is a BBC import and the first few hours are big on atmosphere and setting, but the story is a little too plodding and murky for its own good.

A decidedly odd and generally unpleasant big swing that marks the network's attempt to enter the dark fantasy epic territory occupied by Thrones--with a little Thrones incest thrown in for good measure. What it lacks, unfortunately, is Thrones' sweep, moments of playfulness, and narrative drive--or any drive at all.

Taboo is slow, dark (visually as well as tonally) and unrelentingly humorless. Any of those three qualities on its own would be fine, but put together in service of what’s ultimately a trashy, if pretentious, revenge story, it’s an utter slog, and the biggest creative misstep FX has made in a while.

This show explores something I've never seen from this time era. A true yet light/dark side of things that actually happened. Love the Characters and their path. This show is awesome and I hope it continues to go for seasons to come!

This show has good production quality and lots of potential but doesn't have the greatest writing. The biggest problem is that the main character looks and seems very interesting and unique, but his dialogue is just not in line with that at all. It makes his character seem foolish and simple, in contrast to how he is physically portrayed. Also I really dislike the whole "white civilization is bad black civilization is good" **** that is being pushed by films and tv shows lately. The company guys (representations of white culture in this case) are all portrayed terribly, almost like cartoon villains, while the protagonist (who represents black culture since he went to africa) is characterized as the good guy who loves to say random african words, has african tattoos, and embodies the notion of white guilt over slavery with his flashbacks. This feels more like a fun project for Tom Hardy than an actually good show.

An unbelieveably convoluted script which tries to convey the lead character as both insane, while posessing deductive powers to rival Sherlock himself. The McGuffin of magic is a false flag to cover up the deductive/inductive powers the lead character posesses. However he is also unnecessarily driven to rush plans to fruition as a pointless contrivence, just for the writers to assess personal loss and torture. The final scene is laughable as the ship slowly sails away from the mass murder of soldiers, and the dock they blew up, without a single Navy vessel bothering to care. In short, there are very few characters to care about, and you will likely find yourself hoping the main character fails as 'we have little use for him'.

Had so much potential, but Hardy's new drama just tries to be as disgusting as possible. The show is almost all rising action. You can't understand anything going on. The story is cheapened by sequences of despicable events. I cancelled my series recording after the one scene where James Dulaney magically **** his sister with some sort of voodoo magic. WTF am I watching. This show is awful.

Very one-dimensional from Tom Hardy. Jessie Buckley and Oona Chaplin do add something. Show is starting to wear a bit thin already. Weighing up the future time investment after the 3rd episode is never a good sign.