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The Serpent chronicles the crime spree of Charles Sobhraj, aka Alain Gautier, in the 1970s, but how much of the story is true?
The eight-episode BBC One series, currently streaming on Netflix, is a fictionalised account of true events surrounding the Frenchman, who was also known as "The Bikini Killer" (two of his female victims were found clad in bathing suits) and "The Serpent" because of his cunning nature.
Sobhraj amassed a body count that authorities believe could be anywhere from 12 to 24. His crimes have been the focus of multiple biographies, documentaries and a Bollywood film.
The Serpent stars Tahar Rahim as Sobhraj who, while posing as a gemstone salesman, lures unsuspecting tourists to the apartment he shares with his French-Canadian girlfriend, Marie-Andree Leclerc (Jenna Coleman) in Bangkok.
Sobhraj, Marie and Sobhraj's cohort Ajay Chowdhury (Amesh Edireweera) steal passports and valuables and, in some instances, commit murder to cover their tracks.
While looking into the disappearance of a young Dutch couple whose burnt bodies are eventually discovered by the local authorities, Dutch diplomat Herman Knippenberg (Billy Howle) becomes obsessed with finding their killer. His pursuit leads him to Sobhraj and his accomplices.
Sobhraj, who was born in Saigon where his Vietnamese mother and Indian father raised him until they divorced, had early in his life embarked on a crime spree across Europe, Asia, India and Afghanistan with his wife Chantal Compagnon.
But the Netflix series largely glosses over those events, focusing most of the attention on Sobhraj's killings in Bangkok and Nepal, where he was finally arrested. "Real life is infuriating because it doesn't behave in the way stories do," said writer and producer Richard Warlow, who began working on the series in 2013 alongside director Tom Shankland. "It is a fact-is-stranger-than-fiction situation."
Co-producer Paul Testar, who was tasked with accumulating research to support the storytelling, worked closely with Knippenberg, who gave the team access to his extensive files on Sobhraj. Knippenberg provided Leclerc's diary and journalist Julie Clarke gave the production team hours of taped interviews with Sobhraj.
"I tried to track down every single person who features in the story or their surviving relatives," said Testar. "I built the research as huge as possible so we could draw from it and be truthful about the story."
He maintains that "80 per cent to 90 per cent of the series is accurate". "I don't think any of it is historically untrue," he said. "It was more a case of leaving stuff out."
Sobhraj is currently 76 years old and remains in jail in Kathmandu. According to a recent media report, he has had several open-heart surgeries and will have at least one more.
It seems he is destined to spend the rest of his days in a Nepal cell after being sentenced to life in prison in November 2004 by the Kathmandu district court.
Indo-Asian News Service
