As you may know from some of my earlier posts I do enjoy a good historical costume drama, and so I have been watching the latest offering on BBC TV .. “Taboo” .. although I’m not sure that ‘enjoy’ is the right word to use when referring to this mysterious, dark, brutal and somewhat historically inaccurate tale.
The story is all about some scruffy bloke with a bad haircut returning to England after spending years in Africa, and getting into a bloody dispute with The Honourable East India Company over the ownership of a piece of land off the west coast of North America referred to as “Nootka Sound”, although how a body of water can be described as ‘land’ beats me.
I’ll skip a lot of the plot other than to say that it’s set in 1814 when England is nearing the end of a war with America, with, according to this story, both countries seeking control of Nootka Sound Island, and the East India Company being far from “Honourable” also wanting to grab it for themselves … ‘er ? .. Something to do with .. “all the tea in China”. It’s worth noting that, at this time, they (HIEC) were more powerful than most nations, having a huge private army and navy.
Of course, as you would expect these days, there’s lots of swearing, ‘rumpy-pumpy’ (including incest), graphic violence, mystical mumbo-jumbo and bloody tattoos galore !
So, if you like your historical fiction grim, your sets gloomy, your hero leading character mean and morose, and you can cope with the rather muddled plot. Give it a try and stick with it. You never know…
… There could be a happy ending !
bigjohn 
