Ridley Scott and Tom Hardy team up for new BBC1 drama Taboo

Hollywood actor Tom Hardy and legendary director Ridley Scott are to team up for new eight-part BBC1 drama Taboo.

Based on an original story written by Hardy and his father, the actor is set to lead the drama while Scott will produce. Meanwhile Stephen Knight, who recently worked with Hardy on the film Locke, has signed on to both write and direct the series.

Set in 1813, Taboo will see the younger Hardy play James Keziah Delaney, a rogue adventurer who returns from Africa with 14 ill-gotten diamonds and a quest to avenge his father's death. After refusing to sell the family business to the East India Company, he proceeds to build a trade and shipping empire but finds himself playing a dangerous game between two warring nations, Britain and America.

Hardy has described the series as,"a flagship British drama for this generation. A hybrid of orthodox and unconventional story telling, packed with darkness and spirited characters."

Ridley Scott added, "this man, James Delaney, is a deeply flawed and deeply troubled human being. His greatest struggle will be against the East India Company which, throughout the nineteenth century, was the equivalent of the CIA, the NSA and the biggest, baddest multi-national corporation on earth, all rolled into one self righteous, religiously motivated monolith."