The Serpent (BBC One) | iPlayer
Black Narcissus (BBC One) | iPlayer
Death to 2020 (Netflix)
Doctor Who (BBC One) | iPlayer
Spiral (BBC Four) | iPlayer
Kathmandu, Goa, Bangkok – especially the last – all serve as such perfect backdrops to
The Serpent, the BBC’s first big drama of the new year, and a slow-burn triumph. Look beyond and under the prayer wheels, the soporific beaming mysticism, the garlands and the braids, and you see fat rats and crumbling masonry, gnarled disappointment, disease. It’s a pathetic fallacy for the hippie dream of the 1970s and has seldom been achieved better.
It has been achieved by a skilful retelling of the crimes of Charles Sobhraj, the Viet-Indian Frenchman who murdered at least 12 tourists in that decade. By so many accounts, Sobhraj, in every one of his various stolen identities and forged visas, was seriously charming, winningly amoral. Until he spiked your drink, lamped you on the head, burned you alive, you wouldn’t know he was a sociopath: merely a shady gem dealer who’d invited you, via one or other of his adoring acolytes, to recuperate from your “food poisoning”. Tahar Rahim makes a scarily good job of Sobhraj, albeit we don’t get to see the famous charm, which is, I think, to the good. Jenna Coleman shows she can do