YMMV / Taboo

• Anti-Climax Boss: Sir Stuart Strange is the Big Bad of the first season, the brilliant, vicious, and manipulative head of the East India Company. He is a worthy foil for James, and derails many of James's plans. He's also unceremoniously blown up by one of Cholmondelay's creations, set into the seal on a document.
• Awesome Music: Both versions of the opening song are phenomenal. The normal one features a piano for the main melody, then a few episodes into the show, there is the same music but done with an orchestra this time.
• Creepy Awesome: There's a definite bizarre quality to James Delaney's behavior; he openly claims to be mad and behaves in a way that backs it up, giving an off-putting, threatening vibe that none the less is magnetic and intriguing.
• He's Just Hiding: Plenty of people don't believe that Zilpha's really dead and think that she faked her own death for an undisclosed reason. One, there's the fact that James says he'd have felt it if she died (but to be fair, he is at best an Unreliable Narrator and is batshit crazy). Two, it would be an incredibly unsatisfying way to close out her story and her relationship to James, which hadn't reached a point of completion yet.
• Like You Would Really Do It:
  • James Delaney is a killer, we're all very sure of that. But murder Winter, a young girl whom James is actually fond of? Not very likely. It turns out the murder was committed by an agent of the East India Company to set James up.
  • It would be rather odd if they really did kill Zilpha off-screen and she doesn't factor into any of the second season if it ever gets made. It would be a much too abrupt ending for her and for her relationship with James. Time will tell if it ends up being true or not.
• Magnificent Bastard: James Keziah Delaney is a brooding Byronic Hero who returns to London after the death of his father to take over his trading business and his land claim to Nootka Sound, a strategic area in the Pacific Northwest contested between the British Crown, the East India Company, and the United States of America. James proceeds to play all factions against each other to set up his own monopoly trade, enlisting figures in the city's underworld to do his bidding, surviving multiple assassins going after him, executing a daring raid of an EIC compound so he can manufacture more explosives, and using various mind games to gain access to his half-sister Zilpha's bedchambers. After being captured on orders of the King and tortured in the Tower of London, James refuses to break and secures his own release. James emerges from the intrique as the triumphant party, leaving London with all of his allies on a ship bound for the new world after killing The Mole who spied on him for the EIC and ensuring that his chief enemy, EIC director Sir Stuart Strange, will be bombed in his own office.
• Memetic Mutation: James grunting definitely has made him something of a meme. The term "grunt-posting" is made in 4Chan's board /tv/, the same board that made Tom Hardy's role as Bane in The Dark Knight Rises a meme.
  • "I have a use for you..."
  • "THE FUCKING AMERICANS!!"
  • "I am head of fucking state!"
• Nausea Fuel: Dear God, the entire series is liable to make you sick to your stomach if you try to eat while watching it. It is directly opposed to the many portrayals of London during the 1800s; everything is filthy and cold. Most of the people are either starving to death or are disgusting hedonists allowing their countrymen to starve while they languish in riches. Almost every character is morally grey, with the closest to an actual good person being Winter so of course she gets Stuffed into the Fridge at the show's earliest opportunity. Then there's alllllll the incest. The show never spares one a chance to see James and Zilpha's disturbing relationship in its physical (and metaphysical) form. Combine all that and you get one very, very dark and unsettling story that heads right into Too Bleak, Stopped Caring territory.
• No Yay: Any time Thorne gets within ten feet of Zilpha, after we learn how he treats her.
  • Solomon Coop's abuse of Lorna in Newgate is stomach-churning.
• Slow-Paced Beginning: It is rather difficult to get into the show due to its practically glacial plotting. It's certainly interesting, but it takes a long time for things to really start going and it can lose the impatient viewers quickly.
• Squick: Every single sexual encounter between Zilpha and James. Good God, is it disturbing, and it spares no details so you get to see every filthy moment if it without the mercy of a Sexy Discretion Shot.
• They Wasted a Perfectly Good Character: Michael Kelly's Dr. Dumbarton, the American agent in London, is revealed as a traitor and easily killed off by James in the finale after barely having any time to shine all season.
• Too Bleak, Stopped Caring: The lack of sympathetic characters, pitch-black tone, sexual violence, and very slow pacing have turned some people off from the show.

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