Arriving on TV screens on the first day of 2021, The Serpent follows the strange and terrible career of Charles Sobhraj, a charismatic murderer responsible for an estimated 20 deaths of travellers on the Southeast Asian hippie trail of the 1970s. Sobhraj is played by Tahar Rahim, star of A Prophet and Netflix’s The Eddy, and the cast also includes Jenna Coleman as his girlfriend Marie-Andrée Leclerc, as well as Dunkirk’s Billy Howle and rising star Ellie Bamber, who was in both in Les Misérables and The Trial of Christine Keeler.
Behind the scenes on ‘The Serpent’
BBC © Mammoth Screen
Howle plays Herman Knippenberg, a Dutch diplomat based in the Netherlands Embassy in Bangkok, and much of the filming took place on location in the Thai capital. The city has a strong history of location shoots, with early scenes from The Beach based in the backpacker hub of Khao San Road and The Hangover Part II taking place in many of the travellers’ bars. Back in 1974 Roger Moore’s Bond chased Scaramanga through a floating market in The Man With The Golden Gun, while 2013’s Only God Forgives focused on the city’s neon-lit modernity.
Tahar Rahim as Charles Sobhraj with Jenna Coleman who plays Monique/Marie-Andrée Leclerc
BBC © Mammoth Screen
For The Serpent, the recreation of Seventies Thailand was interrupted by Covid-19 and the consequent shutdown. Although a good portion of the series’ eight hour-long episodes was in the can, the production was forced to relocate to the UK, where they finished the shoot in the small town of Tring in Hertfordshire, of all places.
Khao San Road
Getty Images
In an interview with The Guardian, Rahim said, ‘There’s nothing to do there. It’s got, like, a main street and that’s it.’ Despite his claim, there are a few things to visit in Tring: the Victorian-era Natural History Museum, for example, and the Tring Brewery, known for its pale ale; and the biodiverse Tring Park, which nudges the Ridgeway trail. It may not be Bangkok, but there’s certainly enough for a day out. Watch this space for more on the locations both home and abroad.
Keep scrolling for more pictures of ‘The Serpent’. The TV show begins on BBC One, 1 January 2021, 9pm
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