Hot on the heels of Vikram Seth’s
A Suitable Boy, the BBC is doing another big Indian story,
The Serpent, based on the life of the serial killer, Charles Sobhraj. It has announced that the eight-part TV drama, a co-production with Netflix, will begin on New Year’s Day. As with
The Crown, Netflix has probably taken “artistic licence” with the tale but there is much about Sobhraj still shrouded in mystery. Depending on who you believe, Sobhraj, born in Saigon on April 6, 1944 to a Sindhi father and a Vietnamese mother and brought up in Paris, murdered between 12 and 24 western hippies.