As movies become increasingly more similar to the production schedule of long running television series, more and more movie stars are heading to the small screen in search of challenging, unusual roles. One such star is Tom Hardy, who has teamed up with Ridley Scott and Steven Knight to produce and star in the edgy period revenge thriller TV series Taboo - a joint production of FX and BBC that's being touted as one of the major prestige miniseries events of the unfolding television season.

Now, check out the latest promo for the mysterious new series, cryptically titled "Deserving."

Previously described as a mix between a spy thriller, a dark adventure story and a revenge drama, Taboo is set in 1841 and features Hardy as James Keziah Delaney, the heir to a trading empire. Lost and presumed dead for many years, he returns to England to find what's left of his family legacy infested with enemies and dark conspiracies by the powerful East India Company, which he aims to thwart with the aid of a secret cache of rare diamonds he has come into possession of through unknown means. The title refers to strange skills and possibly unnatural abilities Delaney appears to have acquired while surviving on his own in Africa.

Taboo Tom Hardy Still

The premise was hatched by Hardy and his father Chip, with assistance from Knight following his collaboration with Hardy on the 2013 independent drama Locke. The miniseries is being framed as a major television event, boasting lavish production values and the promise of dark and twisted goings-on as Hardy's protagonist exacts his schemes against his enemies (and, seemingly, flashes back to the mysterious events that shaped him during his exile). Oona Chaplin, Jonathan Pryce, David Hayman and Michael Kelly also star. Kristoffer Nyholm will direct the first four episodes of the series.

Taboo was originally pitched alongside a series of new productions for FX, which also included the now-canceled medieval drama The Bastard Executioner. Hardy is next scheduled to appear in Christopher Nolan's big budget World War II action feature Dunkirk, which is scheduled for release in July 2017 and is set around the famous Dunkirk Evacuation event. Scott is currently in production on Alien: Covenant, which originally went into production as a sequel to Prometheus. He is also believed to still be attached to the feature film adaptation of the 1968 sci-fi series The Prisoner - though there has been no new word on the project for some time.

Taboo is set to premiere in January 2017.

Source: FX Networks