The Serpent is a limited series developed by Mammoth Screen and commissioned by the BBC. It follows the life and crimes, and the eventual capture, of the French serial killer and fraudster Charles Sobhraj
(Tahar Rahim) and his accomplice Marie Andrée Leclerc (Jenna Coleman) as they are pursued by a mild-mannered Dutch diplomat, Herman Knippenberg (Billy Howle) . It was originally released on BBC One on January 1, 2021 before streaming on Netflix in April of 2021.
The Serpent contains examples of the following tropes:
- Adaptational Attractiveness: To be expected with any piece of media drawing from real life events and people. While the real-life Charles Sobhraj was described as handsome in his younger years, he's played by the more classically handsome Tahar Rahim. Despite this, the majority of the actors do closely resemble their real-life counterparts.
- Artistic License – History: While the events depicted in the series are largely accurate, the order in which they took place was altered for the plot.
- According to the lead writer, several aspects of Charles Sobhraj's schemes had to be downplayed because the creators felt the audience wouldn't believe they actually took place.
- Angela Kane felt upon viewing the final product that the series had downplayed her role in the investigation, feeling it had depicted her as "the dutiful diplomat's wife" and not one of the people actively pursuing Sobhraj and his accomplices.
- In real life, Ajay Chowdhury's last confirmed sighting was in Malaysia in 1976. It's speculated that Charles along with possibly Marie-Andrée might have actually murdered him.
- How Dominique met Sobhraj and later escaped from him is entirely true. However, there was another Frenchman who was Adapted Out of the series who was in the same position as Dominique, and escaped with him.
- In Real Life, it's believed that many of Charles' killed victims were in fact participants in many of his crimes and were murdered for eventually threatening to expose him. In the series the victims are all murdered either for being in the wrong place at the wrong time, or for seeing something that they shouldn't have seen. This was likely done out of respect for the families of the victims, and due to exact details being unknown.
- All Girls Want Bad Boys: Marie-Andrée and Juliette both fall for Charles, and maintain their relationships with him even after he's revealed to be a career criminal. (At least, initially.)
- Becoming the Mask: Played with. Marie-Andrée is initially shown to be horrified by Charles' criminality, and reluctancy stays with him either out of coercion or charisma on Charles' part. However, she goes back and forth between being reluctant and voluntarily helping Charles and Ajay. Notably, she voluntarily persuades an American and Canadian tourist in Nepal to stay with her and Charles knowing what will probably happen to them. However, it's ambiguous as to whether or not she's genuinely grown to love committing crimes, or if she's so afraid of Charles that she ends up choosing to help him.
- Bilingual Bonus: Due to several characters being French or French Canadian, multiple sections of dialog are entirely in French.
- Dutch and Thai are also spoken in several instances in the series due to the place and the characters.
- Cruel and Unusual Death: Willem and Helena are poisoned to the point of being too weak to fight back against Charles and Ajay, and are later burned alive.
- Domestic Abuse: By the time Marie-Andrée leaves Quebec to be with Charles, the latter almost immediately starts showing red flags of an abusive partner. Said red flags include him ignoring Marie-Andrée at first for a week, before showering her with gifts once she complains, and then clearly manipulating her when she ends committing her first crime with him. This isn't even scratching the surface of his abusive behavior later in the series.
- Even Evil Has Standards: Ajay is a willing accomplice in Charles’ various crimes, but doesn’t seem to show that much enthusiasm when it comes to murder, even being visibly disturbed by it on more than one occasion. Not enough stop him from participating in the actual killing though.
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Fake Mixed Race: Charles Sobhraj, who is of Vietnamese and Indian descent, is played by Algerian-French actor Tahar Rahim. - Fame Through Infamy: Implied by the series to be why Charles Sobhraj decides to return to Nepal, knowing that he'll be arrested once the authorities realize he's in the country. Knippenberg even states that he revels in the notoriety his crimes have given him.
- Faux Affably Evil: Charles. He uses a carefully constructed facade of a well-spoken and kind gem dealer and party host to take advantage of multiple people, mostly Western tourists traveling to Bangkok along the hippie trail.
- Charles' accomplices Ajay and Marie-Andrée/Monique, though not to the same extent, as both display some semblance of humanity unlike Sobhraj.
- Fish out of Water: Herman Knippenberg is a clean cut, junior diplomat for the Dutch embassy in Thailand who's having to be a novice detective to track down a murderer in a city famous for police corruption and crime, and it shows.
- Go-to Alias: Alain Gautier for Sobhraj, Monique for Marie-Andrée, either using Gautier or Leclerc as her surname.
- Has a Type: Judging from Marie Andrée, Juliette, Nadine, and Teresa (though he only has a sexual relationship with the first two), Charles is particularly attracted to brunettes, especially French brunettes. Herman's wife, Angela, is blonde instead.
- High-Heel–Face Turn: Marie Andrée eventually turns on Charles when she finally realizes he doesn't love her and repents for her crimes in prison.
- Karma Houdini: Even after all the crimes Sobhraj has perpetrated, from fraud to robbery to at least a dozen murders, he's still able to use his cunning to avoid being extradited to Thailand (thereby avoiding his inevitable execution in that country), and by 2000s, is a free man living in France. The only reason he's imprisoned by 2003, and the end of the series, is because he decided to return to the one country that still had murder charges on him.
- Manipulative Bastard: Charles easily manipulates everyone around him for personal gain, to the extent that he's always doing so or at least trying to do so with every person he interacts with.
- Narcissist: Charles ticks many of the boxes, especially later in the series as his ego starts to grow bigger. It's implied in the series that he deliberately returned to Nepal (one place where he could still be arrested) in 2003 because he was fading out of the public eye, and wanted the spotlight back on him. It's explicitly stated in the "Where Are They Now?" Epilogue that this was for dramatization purposes, and in Real Life the true reason is known only to Charles himself.
- Nice Girl: Nadine. She's sweet and caring, and over the series goes through great lengths to thwart Sobhraj's sinister actions. She helps Dominique escape back to France after months of being poisoned and manipulated by Charles, and puts her life at risk collecting evidence against him and his accomplices.
- Non-Action Big Bad: Charles is a very dangerous serial killer, owing to his knowledge of drugs and poisons, charisma, abilities of cunning and deception, and complete lack of a moral compass. Although he's shown to have a relatively muscular physique thanks to Adaptational Attractiveness and is shown exercising on a punchbag, the only time's he's shown physically overpowering anybody is due to his opponent/victim being heavily drugged, as well as having assistance from Ajay. He's completely outmatched by police officers and doesn't even bother putting up a fight whenever they show up to arrest him, surrendering immediately if escape isn't an option.
- Poison Is Evil: Sobhraj's M.O. almost always consists of slipping toxic or sedative substances in his victims' food or drinks.
- Politically Correct Villain: Subverted. Charles frequently uses his mixed racial heritage and experiences of discrimination in Europe as another manipulation tactic and way to justify his usual targeting of Western tourists in Asia, and initially acts offended by Marie-Andrée/Monique calling Ajay "a little brown thug." He then proceeds to call Ajay the exact same thing later.
- Redemption Equals Death: Marie-Andrée comes to reject Charles by the very end of the series, and fully accepts what a monstrous psychopath he is and that she complicit in his crimes and thus goes to prison along with him in India. She develops ovarian cancer, however, and is given an early release to die back in Quebec.
- Refuge in Audacity: Charles travels to Nepal in 2003, the only country in the world that still has a warrant for his arrest due to the murder of two tourists in 1976 as a now world-famous criminal, and makes a photographer take a picture of him in front of a sign that would mark him as being in Kathmandu.
- Soft-Spoken Sadist: Charles occasionally veers into this territory. While his methods of killing are mostly pragmatic, there's no doubt he does derive pleasure from making his victims suffer in several instances.
- Stockholm Syndrome: Marie-Andrée is strongly implied to develop this with regards to Charles over the course of the series. It isn't until the final episode where she's able to break free from his manipulation and control when she finally accepts he's a monster who never cared for her to begin with.
- The Sociopath: Charles manages to tick off every box that defines antisocial personality disorder. He's a con-man who eventually escalates to murdering people, indicating a staggering lack of remorse or empathy. He regularly manipulates everyone around him, and is strongly implied to be incapable of anything more than a very superficial attachment to someone. He's shown to be promiscuous and womanizing, and he also engages in several thrill-seeking or reckless behaviors (His failed jewel heist in India and his subsequent prison escapes come to mind.)
- What Happened to the Mouse?: After Charles cuts ties with Ajay and abandons him on the side of a road in Pakistan, he never appears in the series again. While Ajay Chowdhury is reported to have been sighted in Germany in 1985 (which is mentioned in the Where Are They Now epilogue), it's speculated that Charles Sobhraj may have in fact murdered Ajay sometime in 1976.
- Would Hit a Girl: Charles, time and time again. He punches Nadine hard in the stomach at a swimming pool in public, and he takes part in several murders of women over time.
- Villain Protagonist: The series' plot is split into following Charles Sobhraj and following Herman Knippenberg as he attempts to bring Sobhraj to justice. As a result, both characters switch between acting as the protagonist and as the antagonist.
