“TABOO is dark, it’s dangerous, it’s unpredictable,” says David Hayman, one of Scotland's greatest actors, of his latest on-screen venture.

He should know, he’s built a career out of playing baddies and bent cops. Taboo, which hit screens this month and is tipped to be one of the biggest global TV hits, is a gothic thriller, tinged with a hefty splodge of voodoo and sex. What's not to like?

With Hayman and Hardy, Taboo has two of the best screen psychos in the business. Hayman rose to fame for his portrayal of the Jimmy Boyle, the Glasgow gangster, and Hardy is currently the hardman du jour thanks to his screen personas which include Britain’s most violent criminal Charles Bronson, both of the Kray twins, and the baddie that broke Batman.

Now he plays James Keziah Delaney, a violent outcast who returns to 19th century London to claim his inheritance. Hayman plays his servant.

These two are not the the only ones in Taboo who will give you nightmares though.

The co-producer is Ridley Scott, the man who brought you the horror of Alien, the screenwriter is Stephen Knight who devised Cillian Murphy’s Peaky Blinders razor gang, and the directors are veterans of those famously dark Nordic noir crime thrillers.

And if that wasn’t all the acclaimed Stephen Graham — who terrified audiences as skinhead Combo in This Is England and Al Capone in Boardwalk Empire — reared his shaven tattooed head in last night’s instalment, the second in the series.

But back to Hayman, who took time out from his busy schedule to chat to us in Los Angeles. While his rendition in the late 70s of Glasgow gangster Jimmy Boyle made his name, he cemented his reputation with stand-out performances such as the foul mouthed detective Mike Walker in long running crime drama Trial and Retribution, and has more recently been seen as a violent drug dealer in Top Boy, as well as the infamous cannibal Sawney Bean. He is also one of the best stage actors of his generation. His recent King Lear moved audiences to tears.

“Taboo is the antidote to Downtown Abbey,” the 68-year-old told the Sunday Herald as he prepared to leave the near perpetual sun of California for the snowbound airports of the UK.

“Posh folk in frocks ain’t really my cup of tea and Downtown was your typical soporific Sunday night fare, without any real darkness or threat to it. This is dark. Hardy’s character has strange powers. He can speak to the dead, and his father could speak to him across oceans which was how he knew that he had died.

“My character is probably the most complex next to Tom’s. I’ve got some dark family secrets that I keep to myself, which slowly unravel as the series develops. I’m the only man he trusts, but that trust is jeopardised and the dark secrets are revealed.”

Taboo premiered on BBC One on January 7, followed by a US industry premier on Monday ahead of its US debut on the FX channel the following day.

Hayman said: “It got better viewing figures than Breaking Bad when it started, so that’s encouraging. They reckon it’s going to be a hit.

“It’s got great production values. The BBC are rumoured to have spent something like £20 million for eight hours of television, so that’s like £2.5 million per episode.

“All that money goes on screen. The design was astounding. Certainly the Americans were knocked out by it. The series was cooked up by Tom and his dad. They had been working on it for about seven years then they brought in Steven Knight and they have done a wonderful job.

“I love Tom’s intensity and his power, and the fact that he understands what the camera can do for you — that you can keep it to a minimum but still be really effective.”

Knight has already proved that Hardy can be mesmerising in ultra-low-budget motorway meltdown Locke, and he also cast Hardy as a Camden gangster in Peaky Blinders.

The London-born actor has displayed a striking versatility over the last decade, shifting between compelling television, British independent films and Hollywood blockbusters.

He filled Mel Gibson’s shoes in the Mad Max reboot Fury Road, starred opposite Leonardo DiCaprio in multi-Oscar winner The Revenant, and became Christopher Nolan’s go-to-guy for pretty much everything he’s directed from Inception to this summer’s highly anticipated war epic Dunkirk.

“Hardy is a force of nature,” says Hayman. “He’s got elements of Brando and De Niro. He’s uber-macho, very male, he’s got testosterone thrashing about all over the joint — far more than I ever had in my life — and that’s really interesting to be around.

“He’s a very creative beast. I think he’ll go on to do great things throughout his life. There were other great actors too. I absolutely adore Stephen Graham, who was nominated for a Bafta for This Is England but sadly didn’t get it even though he deserved it.

“Tom is very intense. He knew exactly what he wanted in terms of the script, the design, the way it was shot. He had a vision in his head but the whole thing evolved as we went along, with the script being rewritten and adapted in an organic process. You never knew what was going to happen.

“You would come in in the morning and he would decide to change the script, throw it up in the air, and start a stream of consciousness, right off the top of his head, wham, wham, wham! You think: ‘Tom, what the hell are you talking about?’ Then, suddenly, whoomph! You get it. Out comes a gem — an absolute gem — and you think: ‘Shit, that’s what you’re trying to say. That is a stroke of genius.’

“That process of him of articulating what he wanted to say was fascinating, and frustrating at the same time. It was a creative dialogue, there were never any head-to-heads, we would just sit down and and work through it and once you knew what he wanted it was a doddle.”

But it wasn’t all testosterone and brainstorming intensity. Hayman insists there were funny moments too, most them to do with Hardy’s loping labrador Woody.

“You would be right in the middle of scene and this bloody labrador would suddenly stroll through and throw the whole thing up in the air,” said Hayman.

“It didn’t cause any upsets though because Tom’s the executive producer, along with Ridley Scott, so he can say: ‘F**k off, it’s ma dug.’

“His dog is lovely, though. Tom rescued him and he’s a gentle giant. It’s a very intense production so it was lovely having this big labrador loping around to break the ice.

“Tom is not without humour. There were always a few laughs when things went wrong, and he would suddenly do daft things. At one point he picked up a whole onion and started eating it, unpeeled, right in the middle of the scene. I just burst out laughing.

“In the scene where he greeted me after 10 years he completely abandoned the script and suddenly picked me up and started jumping up and down, which was lovely because it was so unexpected.

“I never saw Ridley once as he was only on set a couple of times when I wasn’t working. Funny story, though. It used to take me about three hours to travel the 30 miles from Euston Station to the set at Tilbury Fort because of the traffic. Ridley would just jump in his helicopter and it would take him about eight minutes. No’ bad being Ridley Scott, eh?”

Hayman: a man unafraid to put his politics on stage

Hayman describes Taboo as “a political thriller but with mystical and mythical elements to it” — much like the political drama Scotland has been through in the last decade in which the actor played a starring role as a committed and vocal Yes supporter.

He toured Scotland during the independence referendum campaign with his one man show The Pitiless Storm, playing a lifelong Labour trade unionist who rejects an OBE and resolves to vote Yes.

Hayman is bringing the character back in February for a sequel, The Cause of Thunder, just as another independence storm looms on the horizon.

He said: “A Pitiless Storm was a truly wonderful experience because it was art, life and politics all coming together in one show and you could cut the atmosphere with a knife. It was electrifying at times.

“I was convinced we were going to win 60-40 and I was shattered when we didn’t because I watched attitudes radically change throughout the course of the show as people became more accepting.

“The Cause of Thunder catches up with Bob Cunningham two years on — with 56 SNP MPs elected to Westminster, the Labour Party wiped out, Brexit and Trump.

“I’m taking it to school halls, miners’ welfare clubs, whisky distilleries. I’m going to Stornoway, Islay, Inverness, Bo’ness, all over, places where they wouldn’t normally get theatre so they can get to see somebody they know aff the telly.

“I’m passionate about a second referendum, but I think we’ve got to be very careful about the timing. I think we’ve got to wait to see until Brexit pans out once May has triggered article 50, see how destructive that is going to be, and what Scotland will get and what it will be denied.

“It would be horrible to go prematurely to the country again and lose, because I think that would set us back for a generation — or ten years, anyway — and I really don’t want that to happen so I really hope Nicola and her team bring great wisdom to bear on when they will green light a second referendum.

“But very definitely I am all for it, I can’t wait for it. I think we’ve got to remove ourselves from the madness of this world and I think we missed a great opportunity in 2014, I really, really do.

“It was the majority of my generation, the over 55s, who said No but it’s the young people whose future is at stake. It’s their country, it doesn’t belong to me or the people of my generation for however long we’ve got left, it’s their’s and I hope they grasp that opportunity and go for it. I do think Brexit it is a major, major game changer - it has to be.”