The Serpent, BBC 1 Sundays and iPlayer
We may find it an uncomfortable trait, but we are fascinated by serial killers.
That a man, and they are almost always men, could repeatedly plan to and then kill people for his sadistic pleasure perplexes most of us.
We are disgusted but attracted.
There’s plenty of talk about how we should concentrate on the victims rather than the murderer, but television drama will always play to the crowd and audiences want to know about the sadist.
The Serpent, based on the story of Charles Sobhraj, is the latest BBC hit, but it is part of a huge back catalogue of the genre.
Last week saw the BBC mini-series, The Pembrokeshire Murders, about serial killer John Cooper.
Before Christmas, ITV had a hit with Des, the story of Dennis Nielsen who murdered at least 12 men and boys before he was arrested in 1983. His memoir, written in jail before he died in 2018, is to be published next week after a legal battle with the families of his victims.
And probably the most successful TV drama ever filmed in Northern Ireland, The Fall, was about a serial killer so attractive, the actor playing him had actually worked as a model.
There’s also a buzz around a new Netflix launch. The Night Stalker focuses on Los Angeles 1980s serial killer, Richard Ramirez.
The Serpent, meanwhile, is halfway through its eight-episode run on the BBC.
It tells the story of Sobhraj, a French/Vietnamese socialite, who hunted and killed his victims on the Asian hippy trail of the mid-1970s.
A gem dealer, he was based in Bangkok but didn’t restrict his killing to Thailand. He has also murdered while on holidays in Nepal.
Sobhraj, however, is not a lone killer. He is a skilled manipulator who has a way of making people feel “the sun was shining on you” in his presence.
His partner Marie-Andrée Leclerc (played by Jemma Coleman) is at times a willing accomplice, as is Sobhraj’s (played by Tahar Rahim) spiritual brother and co-killer, Ajay Chowdhury (Amesh Edireweera).
Ajay’s job is to lure the backpackers to Sobhraj’s Bangkok apartment for a party around the communal pool, where slowly Sobhraj entraps and drugs the naive traveller like a serpent slowly strangling a deer.
His nemesis, in this drama version, is Herman Kippenberg (Billy Howle), a principled Dutch diplomat who despite jeopardising his career, answers the call of the mother of a missing backpacker and investigates the Sobhraj crimes.
His initial interest was in two Dutch backpackers who are found murdered and burnt beyond recognition.
Police are at first uninterested in Kippenberg’s theories, but despite social ridicule and reprimands from his boss, the ambassador, he refuses to give up.
This contrast between the good and pure home of Kippenberg and his wife Angela and the evil lair of Sobhraj and Leclerc is at the centre of the drama.
Rahim is excellent as the attractive, ice cool and seductive killer, but it is Coleman who stands out in a subtle performance as Leclerc who vacillates between her love for Sobhraj, her compliance to his will and her hatred and disgust at the killing.
The Serpent also has the advantage of being set in an interesting backdrop. Bangkok is one of the world’s great cities and the Himalayas of Nepal gives it a much greater visual interest than serial killers based in the north of England.
It’s well acted and competently written and filmed. If you like crime drama you’ll be very happy with eight hours in a company of this particular serial killer. If not there’s nothing different or interesting here to be worth your attention.
