![]() Throw in Sobhraj’s document-forging and gift for manipulation, and you could have played this game of cat-and-mouse out over four hours in deliriously entertaining fashion, complete with trippy costumes, a killer soundtrack and an eclectic cast, with no embellishment required. The thing Herman was trying to accomplish was already outside of his job purview and required that he work against the interests of corrupt law enforcement agencies, disinterested embassy figures each with a different agenda and victims and witnesses so prone to drug-addled meandering that it was hard to know when somebody had been murdered and when they’d just fallen off the grid in a narcotic haze. The thing that’s baffling about Warlow’s approach to the story is that the process of finding and catching Sobhraj was already immeasurably twisty. ![]() With crimes straddling international jurisdictions and involving nationals from disparate countries, Sobhraj seemed uncatchable until he drew the attention of low-level Dutch diplomat Herman Knippenberg (Billy Howle) and his wife Angela (Ellie Bamber), who spent years seeking justice. Using Bangkok as his central hub, Sobhraj swapped names and identifications, and he worked with cohorts, including lovely Quebecois Marie-Andree Leclerc (Jenna Coleman) and the amoral Ajay (Amesh Edireweera). Most of his victims were tourists on the so-called hippie trail and his other crimes included bank robbery, cheque fraud and passport manipulation. Nicknamed the Serpent for his slithery evasiveness and the Bikini Killer because several of his victims were found in skimpy swimwear, Sobhraj ( Tahar Rahim) killed at least a dozen people in Thailand, India and Nepal over a few years in the mid-’70s. In this case, Warlow’s eight-part Netflix/BBC One drama The Serpent ends up being an infuriating blueprint for how bad storytelling choices, bad accents and an opaque central performance can thwart even the most inherently gripping of yarns. Ripley-esque saga about an identity-conflicted con man, complete with a fractured timeline. It’s impossible to know if writer Richard Warlow took inspiration from The Assassination of Gianni Versace maybe it’s a complete coincidence that he approached the menacing tale of ’70s serial killer Charles Sobhraj as a Talented Mr. It was a framing device that didn’t always feel organic, but it yielded unexpected emotional rewards as the series progressed, aided tremendously by Darren Criss’ lacerating performance. Ripley-style journey from con artist with identity issues to road-tripping murderer. ![]() For the second season of FX’s American Crime Story franchise, Tom Rob Smith used a reverse-chronological structure to trace Andrew Cunanan’s Talented Mr.
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