If you’ve been enjoying BBC1’s cracking Tom Hardy Saturday night period drama Taboo then settle in – it could be a long ride.


Writer Steven Knight tells RadioTimes.com that his current aim is to make up to three series of the show, in which Hardy stars as grim James Delaney, a renegade Regency adventurer who returns to London to claim his legacy amid mounting opposition from various ruthless enemies.

“We think it has got a two and a three certainly, that’s the plan,” Knight told RadioTimes.com. “After that who knows? This series is eight parts – it’s a lot of time.”

As for Knight’s other gritty BBC period drama – Peaky Blinders – the writer is hard at work writing the fourth series which will start shooting in April to air in October.

A fifth has also been commissioned, but Knight anticipates that could be the final series in the BBC saga starring Cillian Murphy and Helen McCrory.

“Never say never, but we feel that [series] five may be the last,” Knight says. “We don’t know for sure. We will see how we feel about it. Peaky is one of those things everybody loves, and the response has been so magnificent on both sides of the Atlantic.

“I have got the end in my mind; whether that happens at the end of five is the question,” he said. “I want it to end when the first air raid siren sounds in Birmingham.

“It is a story of a family between two world wars. It begins in 1919 when they have just come back from the war and the family’s journey is towards legitimacy and respectability and to leave their past behind. The big question of the whole series is this: is that possible?”


As RadioTimes.com revealed last year, Knight is also keen to make a movie of the hit drama which includes rap superstar Snoop Dogg among its fans.