The BBC’s latest eight-part crime drama The Serpent depicts the real-life story and investigation into notorious 1970s serial killer Charles Sobhraj, also known as the Bikini Killer, who killed an unknown number of backpackers on the Hippie Trail in Southeast East Asia between 1975 and 1976.
The series begins with a 1997 interview where Sobhraj (Tahar Rahim) is asked whether he is a “dangerous man” to which he replies, “the question first is whether I committed murder”. This perfectly sums up his character as he constantly believes he is above the law and tries to manipulate it wherever possible. It also highlights how well Rahim portrays the killer and how he gets the audience to fully believe he is a cold and calculated murderer, resulting in him providing the most compelling performance of the series.
The other central character is Dutch diplomat Herman Knippenberg (Billy Howle), who is alerted to Sobhraj’s crimes following the disappearance of two Dutch backpackers. Howle is excellent in the role, forcing the audience to root for Knippenberg throughout the series.
The other major success of this series is how it adapted to Covid-19, to which directors Tom Shankland and Hans Herbot must be commended for. As the show had started production in Bangkok prior to the pandemic and had to shut down in March 2020, it could not complete filming in Thailand and had to resume filming in the UK, meaning that Tring dubbed for Southeast Asia. Although not uncommon for locations to be dubbed for somewhere else, Shankland and Herbot managed to seamlessly blend the two settings, resulting in it being virtually impossible to spot the drastic change in filming location.
Despite this major success, the series has one major flaw, its use of flashbacks. The constant changing between time and location is incredibly confusing and extremely irritating. The worst example of this is in the first episode, which only introduces Sobhraj’s first victim, American Teresa Knowlton (Alice Englert) two thirds of the way through the episode, making the plotline somewhat disjointed.
However, the series does capture the excess of the 1970s, creating a great aesthetic to the piece. The costume department brought the glamour of the decade to life with its large aviator sunglasses and flared jeans, which adds to the seductiveness of the drama and lures the audience in like Sohbraj lures his victims.
Overall, the series gets off to a somewhat slow start due to the flashbacks but gets better as it progresses and the stakes get greater. There is no doubt why the BBC released all the episodes on iPlayer because the show is certainly binge-worthy due to it being the most anxiety inducing series I’ve watched in a long time. It also would benefit from being watched all at once as I could see people becoming bored after the first two episodes, only for it to ramp up for the third.
3 stars
Image Credit: The MovieDB
