The Serpent

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]

[Tahar Rahim] brings a breathtaking subtlety to the part of Sobhraj. ... It takes time, admittedly, until the full details of the master plan Sobhraj followed sink in.

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.

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.

In the broad strokes "The Serpent" resembles any number of true-crime tales, but by meeting those criteria, this limited series still manages to get under your skin.

The Serpent is certainly a slow burn, and it’s jumpy timeline will take some getting used to. But the lead performance by Rahim, and fine supporting performances by Coleman, Howle and Bamber help us stay engaged with the story.

Despite strong performances, though, the series takes an important story and loses it in unnecessarily complex time-jumping storytelling.

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.

With the local Thai police both corrupt and uninterested in the fate of ‘long-hairs’, Knippenberg becomes the detective figure in the subsequent story; once you grasped that, The Serpent became less slippery.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.