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CRITIC SCORE DISTRIBUTION | ||
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Positive:
9
Mixed:
8
Negative:
1
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Critic Reviews
TV Guide MagazineApr 9, 2021
Season 1 Review:
Engrossing as it builds to moments of Hitchcockian suspense, the eight-part The Serpent shifts sometimes too dizzying back and forth through time as it dramatizes Sobhrah's merciless crimes. Still, you'll root for those who trying to pin him down. [12 - 25 Apr, p.11]
Apr 1, 2021
Season 1 Review:
Serpentine (I see what you did there) storyline concerns aside, “The Serpent” is an effectively unsettling, fictionalized telling of the incredible and horrific series of kidnappings and murders orchestrated by one Charles Sobhraj, played to suave and oily perfection by Tahar Rahim.
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Mar 31, 2021
Season 1 Review:
Rahim’s is a great, if slow-building, performance, perfectly persuasive in a role riven with secrets and lies. Edireweera and Coleman also locate human frailties in the despicable people they play. The pace of “The Serpent” quickens in its later episodes, whiplashing the audience with well-conceived character revelations, plot reversals and tightening international manhunt mechanics.
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Apr 2, 2021
Season 1 Review:
The first five installments make for a gripping crime series, but the final three act more like a dull document of events. The narrative propulsion all but evaporates, and it is only through the strength of the performances, notably Rahim's, that the series remains watchable as it crawls to a conclusion.
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The GuardianMar 5, 2021
Season 1 Review:
It tells the story, makes Sobhraj’s life look fairly glamorous, amid all that murder, and makes it clear enough that these young people had their futures taken from them in the cruellest of ways. But it is not a whodunnit, nor much of a why-they-dunnit: anyone who knows the story will have some idea of where it lands. It looks the part, and pulls the right strings, but, in the end, it left me a little cold.
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The IndependentMar 5, 2021
Season 1 Review:
It’s not quick. Even allowing for the need to introduce the characters and the timeframes, the pace is glacial, at odds with the rapid changes of time and location. ... It’s Herman’s storyline that’s the more interesting of the two. We know what the snake is going to do. The challenge is catching it.
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Mar 31, 2021
Season 1 Review:
The longer you watch this show, the more you’ll understand their plight—the thing you want is almost there, over and over, but then the scene changes, the plot shifts, and you’re back in the frozen ennui of a show that will never deliver that decisive, salutary kick.
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Mar 30, 2021
Season 1 Review:
As it becomes evident that fundamental questions about Sobhraj’s temperament and decision-making are beyond this series’ grasp, the temporal leaps start to seem like distraction more than edification. Sobhraj is, by the end, an ably played monster who did things at a certain time, with neither man nor time convincingly explored beyond depiction.
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Apr 2, 2021
Season 1 Review:
As a standalone history, it leaves a lot to be desired. It feels as if the miniseries is an attempt to sell us on the fact that while this slice of history—various sunglasses and sapphires and all—is interesting, the full details of it are too difficult to dramatize fully.
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Apr 2, 2021
Season 1 Review:
If this reads as an entirely formulaic cat-and-mouse mystery thriller well, there's "The Serpent" for you. Breaking it down in such a linear fashion is deceptive, however, since a central irritant with this series is the script's incessant leaps back and forth through time.
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Mar 26, 2021
Season 1 Review:
Writers Richard Warlow and Toby Finlay (both Ripper Street alums) seem hesitant to engage with that material in any depth, and confused as to whether they’re making a stylish, voyeuristic period crime caper or a paranoid political thriller or a sober monument to Sobhraj’s victims or a tamer version of torture-porn flicks like Hostel.
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