To those looking for a captivating mini-series for the end of summer, I recommend ‘The Serpent‘, an international co-production with the participation of BBC studios, released in 2021. The story is inspired by a series of crimes that took place 50 years ago, in 1975 and 1976, in Asian countries that were at that time part of the track of young hippies in search of themselves, sensations and experiences that did not avoid use of drugs. It is a ‘true crime’ case or rather ‘true criminal’ that follows the corpse-strewn trail of a serial killer named Charles Sobhraj, who with the help of his girlfriend and another accomplice lured, drugged, robbed and killed young Westerners naive enough to fall into his nets. We know from the beginning who the criminals are and the fact that they were caught and punished for at least some of their crimes. They committed at least 12 murders, but were only convicted of two. What the eight episodes of the miniseries tell is how they were captured and how their crimes were put to an end in a time when there were no biometric passports, video cameras on every street corner, electronic records of border crossings, social networks and Internet messaging that today allow the location of anyone and anywhere. The three grim criminals are opposed by a couple of young Dutch diplomats who, starting from the disappearance of two of their compatriots, investigated fiercely and eventually managed to overcome the indifference of bureaucrats in Western diplomacy and the corruption of local police, not without endangering their own careers and even more.
I liked the way the narrative was built, managing to catch and keep the attention of viewers, especially in the first 3-4 episodes, alternating between the investigation of the diplomats turned amateur detectives in the conditions of a foreign country and the crimes that succeed one another, gradually revealing the psychological profile of the criminals and their backgrounds. Repetitions appear in episodes 4-6, but the pace of the action accelerates again in the final two episodes. There are three groups of characters: the criminals, those who chase them and the victims. The fact that viewers have the opportunity to get to know some of the victims, young people who went on a trip in search of spiritual or action adventures, whose lives and dreams are cut short by the assassins, puts the cruelty of the crimes into true light, compensating for the initial attraction caused by the encounter with the two criminals, played by two actors with charisma and remarkable physical presence: Tahar Rahim and Jenna Coleman. The role of the young Dutch diplomat who risked his career to track down and capture the criminals is played by Billy Howle, who expressively portrays the hero’s anxieties and doubts, despite some unnecessary theatrical exaggerations. The cinematography is spectacular and allows those who did not live through the hippie era and the times when the mirage of Asia much less corrupted by mass tourism was still strong to imagine the continent, and those who did catch those times to remember them. ‘The Serpent‘ is an interesting and captivating series, quality entertainment.
