This review contains spoilers. Atticus was one of four new characters introduced this week, each one sporting a more perfect name for a nineteenth century melodrama than the last. There’s him, royal adviser Solomon Coop, actress Lorna Bow and thirteen-year-old urchin Winter (whose hopeful plan to get to America pegged her as this series’ war movie private with dreams of buying the family farm and thereby signed her death warrant for a few episodes’ hence). “Miss Winter?” asked Delaney. “Just Winter” she told him, like one of the X-Men. Winter’s not the only one with a touch of the superhero about her. Delaney’s omnipotence continued in week two as he strode through the episode steadily unfazed by a growing list of enemies. The East India Company wants him dead? He’s unflustered. An American spy marches him along at gun-point? He’s bored. A Malay assassin is sent after him? He sets fire to his boat, guts him in the street, chews off a lump of his neck and fails even to look as excited about that as he did when someone moved his horse. His sheer competency is what makes him unexciting to watch. Delaney does nothing but make moves. This week he installed a safe, bought a ship, burnt another, propositioned his sister… all without hesitation, all without fear. Action is obviously required in drama, but failure to act can work too. Shakespeare got a whole play out of it. A good one, too. The fact that he knows more than anyone else doesn’t help us to get a handle on him either because it means we’re yet to see him truly on the back foot. He deals with assassins and surprise step-mums with the same steady acceptance. Similarly doomed seems to be his infatuation with Zilpha. What is his ambition there? Does he envisage a cosy future with a gaggle of web-footed children living off the fat of his newly built shipping company? The new Mrs Delaney, aka Lorna “spanner in the works” Bow may put pay to that. First James’ mother, then Zilpha’s, and now an actress… Delaney Sr evidently had an eye for the ladies. Perhaps that’s what did for him in the end. Delaney’s detective mission to find out who poisoned his father stalled somewhat this week. In news that sounds more fitting for a children’s bedtime story than a Gothic melodrama, he learned from Bryce that the culprit may be a honey-beer seller on Feather Lane, but that doesn’t bring him any closer to a verdict. He does know, courtesy of Atticus, that Zilpha’s husband wanted to have the old man killed. That’s two strikes against Thorne Geary. I give him two more episodes at best. In it for the long haul will be Jonathan Pryce’s Sir Stuart Strange. Those two are the Inspector Campbell and Thomas Shelby of Taboo, two powerful men on opposite sides of a gulf who get each other’s goat. One represents the establishment, the other is a renegade. Who will win? Ultimately? Invincible, mad James Delaney of course. He’s untouchable, even painting that cobbled street with his blood. Read Louisa’s review of the previous episode, Shovels And Keys, here.