What a view | The Serpent: the crimes of serial killer Charles Sobhraj, who murdered backpackers on Asia’s ‘hippie trail’
- The BBC-Netflix crime drama stars Tahar Rahim as Vietnam-born French killer Charles Sobhraj
- In the 1970s, he was responsible for the deaths of up to 24 people
Ah, the 1970s! The heyday of flared trousers, aviator shades and flowery shirts with monstrous collars stretching into next week. They were also a time of a monstrous serial killer who frequented the “hippie trail”, which connected Afghanistan and Thailand and points in between, especially Nepal.
Tahar Rahim portrays the smooth sociopath in The Serpent (coming soon to Netflix), a chiller-thriller period drama evoking a relatively recent world of shocking naivety and trust that seems so alien today. It’s also a world brought convincingly back to life with the considerable help of Tim McInnerny as a Belgian diplomat-investigator and Jenna Coleman as Sobhraj’s conniving partner and aloof accomplice.
Filmed mostly in Bangkok’s less modernised districts, with tantalising glimpses of a Hong Kong looking almost impossibly quaint and low-rise, The Serpent hisses with quiet menace from the start.
Luring the unsuspecting into mortal danger and dodging police forces around Asia by using a collection of fake passports and identities, one of the 20th century’s most devious criminals built a revolving cult around himself – revisited here in all its apparently glamorous, but ultimately tacky, detail.
Ten years later and half a world away, and we’re in a Los Angeles being terrorised by a repeat offender who favours more rudimentary methods. It’s 1985 and citizens are being shot, stabbed, strangled or bludgeoned in their homes, while children are being abducted and assaulted – all the crazed handiwork of one elusive man.