Steven Knight has almost completed the script for the second season of 'Taboo'.

Tom Hardy

Tom Hardy

The 60-year-old screenwriter is putting the finishes touches to the script for the gritty drama series - which stars Tom Hardy as James Delaney, an adventurer who returns home to London from Africa in 1814 in order to inherit his late father's shipping empire - and has revealed he is planning on continuing the show until its third series.

Steven said to Collider: "It's almost completed in terms of the script we had a couple of delays because of other commitments but we are hoping to start shooting at the end of this year or the start of next.

"If we all stick with it and we all wanna keep doing it then that is the plan [three seasons] because I've got a kind of geographical route I think to take and it's basically a journey West.

"I have a destination in mind which is always nice to have if you're setting out on this big journey which is what writing three eight hours is - it's good to know where you're heading."

The 'Peaky Blinders' creator also spoke of his long-standing professional relationship with Tom, 41, and insisted that the reason it "works" is because they don't often socialise away from set.

He shared: "It's really strange, I think it works because we don't socialise, occasionally we do, but not very often I think that the relationship is totally about the work.

"The great thing about Tom is that's his passion is the work, the acting, he's not a fan of celebrity but he just loves to act and he loves to process and the craft.

"For me to have him occasionally available to do roles that you've written is wonderful because you know you can trust someone to really deliver what we're doing."