The Serpent – BBC1

It’s January, it’s snowing and we’re all in lockdown. There’s vaccine hope on the horizon but it’s not coming quickly enough for people who now consider a 10 minute walk to Greggs for a steak bake the social highlight of their week. It’s me, I’m exactly that person. I would rather be anywhere else but here. So yes, yes, I know there’s a predatory serial killer lurking – no whodunnit here as we’re introduced to him at the very start – but 1970s Bangkok is still exactly the sort of place I want to be transported to on chilly January evenings. The Serpent gives us an instantly cool, highly intoxicating location, filled with swinging parties, youthful adventurers, dazzling yellow sunshine and a market so real you can almost smell the food. This is an immersive atmosphere to wallow in, ignoring the slide into disappointment that 2021 will inevitably bring.

Charles Sobhraj (Tahar Rahim) is super cool, very fashionable and stylish but his look is also giving me strong Dennis Nilsen vibes. He’s clearly notorious, and yet I’ve never heard of him. I bet a large part of the BBC audience hasn’t heard of him either. His performance is very cold and guarded; a dead-eyed predator ready to strike. He’s a precious gem dealer, working on the wrong side of the law and he’s quick to make the moves on Williem and Helena, a Dutch couple who he invites to his Bangkok apartment. There’s a big show of hospitality, but we see he wants to make use of them for gem smuggling back to Europe. Jenna Coleman is his beautiful French girlfriend Marie-Andrée, also called Monique. While she’s slightly removed from Charlie’s nefarious schemes, she’s certainly complicit and doesn’t raise a hand to help even though guests are getting mysteriously sick under her roof. She has this sort of saintly quality to her, queen of Sobbhraj’s emerging empire, silently conferring her blessings on these terrible crimes. Later we see Helena and Williem sick, poisoned by Sobhraj who has been crushing pills into their food and drink. Is this retribution because the didn’t want to get involved in smuggling, or is this a game for him, picking off people he considers more privileged than him?

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'The Legacy: Series 3'

The Legacy is a Danish drama from DR Fiktion, but quite a different beast to stable-mates The Killing and Borgen. Series 1 was described by The Guardian as “utterly addictive” and I’m pleased to report that while the characters have grown and changed, this remains true.
Instead of dark political intrigue or dark and bloody murders in grey dockyards The Legacy offers up an enormous rambling farm-house in rural Denmark and an off-kilter family drama. This series spins out from the death of artist and domineering matriarch Veronika Gronnegaard and the after effects on her children. The Legacy in Danish is Arvingerne which literally translates as “heirs”. As these kids squabble over Veronika’s house, her reputation and her art we can see why Sky Arts picked it up rather than Sky Atlantic, the more traditional home for drama.
In series 1 we were rooting for Signe, Veronika’s fourth child adopted and brought up by normal down-to-earth people. She’s the surprise beneficiary of Veronika’s deathbed will and we’re willing her to get her share of the inheritance from her argumentative, entitled and just plain rude step-siblings. Lovely Signe learns her secret family history and is excited, but not about the money. She’s lonely and wants to be their sister. But this simple story of trying to be a blended family quickly gets messed up. Money changes people. Signe started believing her own hype.
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'Z: The Beginning of Everything'

Another sumptuous drama here on a subscriber service. It’s almost like this is where the big bucks reside in these digital days. Z: The Beginning of Everything is the story of Zelda Fitzgerald, Mrs F Scott Fitzgerald to you dear. It’s based on Therese Anne Fowler’s book which Christina Ricci read and wanted to audition for. It turns out no one was making it, so she decided to do it herself. Ricci says that Zelda had suffered bad press over the years, with the focus firmly set on her genius husband. Ricci was sick of her being overlooked and sets out to flip that script.
Ricci with her soulful doe eyes and her fierce blonde bob is Zelda Sayre Fitzgerald, a brilliant, beautiful and talented Southern belle, the original flapper and an icon of the Jazz Age in the flamboyant 1920s. Zelda is young and bored to death in her little quaint country town of Montgomery, Alabama. Having never been to the American south it looks lovely to me – all wide tree-lined avenues, sugary iced tea and cotillion balls at the country club.
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'Midnight Sun'

If you trust my recommendations dear reader, stop reading right now and just watch this. If you need a little more convincing, read on. It’s only March and Midnight Sun has quite possibly staked the claim for most gripping episode 1 of a drama series this year. It’s an hour of tv that’s up there with The Killing and The Bridge. All the praise to Sky Atlantic for serving up this slice of stunning high-end noir. My only criticism is they’re portioning it out into weekly helpings, and I can’t bosh the lot in a weekend. Because I very definitely would.
This is a French-Swedish coproduction (yes, it has the Canal+ mark of quality) which follows Kahina Zadi (Leila Bekhti), a French police officer, as she heads to a small mining community in remote northern Sweden to lead an investigation into the spectacularly grisly murder of a French citizen. Her Swedish sidekick is local DA Anders Harnesk (Gustaf Hammarsten) and his rather more jaded boss Rutgar (Peter Stormare). Even with just a few minutes under the belt we can see that all of these characters are fully fledged with their own particular quirks and histories just beginning to be hinted at.
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'And Then There Were None' – On the Box

Oh my! How grizzly, how gruesome, how horrible!
I’m an Agatha Christie fan and I knew despite the veneer of respectability that she liked it dark. And bloody. And sinister. Even little old Miss Marple has a dark side. But in all that time I never realised Agatha Christie was a frustrated horror writer. This all became clear watching And Then There Were None (BBC1), a period murder mystery based on Christie’s novel of the same name. Even George R R Martin (aka the butcher of all your favourite characters) would have said “Come on now Agatha, don’t you think nine elaborate murders based on a racist nursery rhyme that drive a young woman to suicide in a mansion on a deserted island is a bit much? Death by dipping a guy in molten gold is one thing, but this is just nasty!”
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