Taboo

D is for James Keziah Delaney

James Delaney is my new favourite character and I’ve not been this enamoured with a character for a long time. James Delaney is from the TV show Taboo and it centres around Delaney and this piece of land in America which he inherits and those who want to get that land off of him – the British monarchy, the East India Company, and the Americans.

James Delaney is so great because he’s like a puppet master, pulling everyone’s strings and finding a use for everyone he encounters. He’s also a master tactician, it’s like his world is a game of chess and he can predict and counter everyone’s moves before they make them.

James Delaney is not a nice person. He scares and unsettles people because he seems to know magic and once lived with “savages”. He doesn’t really judge anyone and any and all information he gleans he will remember and use when the time is right. He’s rude and blunt and will throw people aside and not care for anyone’s feelings, but if you’re loyal to him, he’ll be loyal to you. He does respect, and even trust, a few people. One of those is Lorna Bow, his father’s widow. She’s one of the few people who’s not afraid of him and trusts him with her life.

The fact that Delaney only trusts and likes a few people makes him even more fascinating to me. He uses people and those that do get under his skin, he does his best to protect. James Delaney is just so cool, he often appears calm and collected but he has a simmering rage that can boil over any moment in a gruesome act of violence. Like I said, he’s not a nice person, but he’s so clever and cunning and there’s just something I find captivating about him. I can’t wait to see what James Delaney gets up to in series two of Taboo.

TOP 5 WEDNESDAY: Current Favourites that Aren’t Books

Top 5 Wednesday is a great feature created by GingerReadsLainey and hosted by ThoughtsonTomes. To find out more about Top 5 Wednesday and the upcoming topics, check out its Goodreads page. This week it’s all about favourites that aren’t books, so it could be TV shows you’ve been enjoying, makeup you’ve been wearing, food and drink you’ve loved – anything! I’ve decided my post will be about my current favourite TV shows. I’m usually pretty terrible at keeping up with TV shows but these five are the ones I’m really enjoying right now and am making the effort to keep up with.

Taboo
While I usually spend about 30% of an episode confused about who’s who and what exactly is going on I am really intrigued about this show. That’s mainly because I love the main character James Delaney (played by Tom Hardy) a lot, he’s just so interesting! He seems to have dark magic, he’s very clever and can see all the pieces on the board and is nearly always a step ahead of everyone else. He’s not a nice person, he even uses people like pawns in his game but I find him so interesting. Taboo is now a show that I actively look forward to as it gets closer to the time it airs on Sunday.

 

The Halcyon
The Halcyon is the other new show that I find myself looking forward to every week. It’s set in a posh London hotel during WWII and it is bit like Downton Abbey in the sense it’s about the “upstairs” or the hotel guests and the owners of the hotel, the Hamilton’s, and the “downstairs” all the staff who work in the hotel, from maids, to chefs, to the managers. It’s got some interesting characters and there’s some great relationships. My favourites are Betsey, the lounge singer, Toby the younger and often forgotten son of the hotel owner, and O’Hara an American journalist that says what he thinks.

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