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?
Continue reading “The Serpent – BBC1”