The Serpent

Inspired by real events, The Serpent reveals the story of serial conman Charles Sobhraj (Golden Globe nominee Tahar Rahim) and the remarkable attempts to bring him to justice.

Posing as a gem dealer, Charles Sobhraj and his girlfriend Marie-Andrée Leclerc (Jenna Coleman) travelled across Thailand, Nepal and India in 1975 and 1976, carrying out a spree of crimes on the Asian ‘Hippie Trail,’ becoming the chief suspects in a series of murders of young Western travellers. When Herman Knippenberg (Billy Howle), a junior diplomat at the Dutch Embassy in Bangkok, unwittingly walks into this intricate web of crime, he - with the help of his spouse Angela (Ellie Bamber), police around the world and witnesses of Sobhraj’s devious manipulation -- sets off an extraordinary chain of events that will see Sobhraj become Interpol’s most wanted man, with arrest warrants in multiple continents. The eight-part limited series stars Tahar Rahim as Charles Sobhraj, Jenna Coleman as Marie-Andrée Leclerc, Billy Howle as Herman Knippenberg; Ellie Bamber as Angela Knippenberg, Amesh Edireweera as Ajay Chowdhury and Tim McInnerny as Paul Siemons, among others. Produced by Mammoth Screen, part of ITV Studios, The Serpent is a co-production between BBC One and Netflix. It is written by Richard Warlow and Toby Finlay, directed by Tom Shankland and Hans Herbots, produced by Stephen Smallwood, and executive produced by Richard Warlow, Tom Shankland, Preethi Mavahalli and Damien Timmer for Mammoth Screen. The Serpent was shot in Thailand and the UK. The plot is inspired by a true story, however all dialogue is fictionalised.