‘The Serpent’ – BBC Sets New Year’s Day Premiere For Crime Drama Starring Tahar Rahim & Jenna Coleman
BBC One has set a New Year’s Day premiere date for crime drama ‘The Serpent’, starring Tahar Rahim (‘The Looming Tower’, ‘The Last Panthers’) & Jenna Coleman (‘Doctor Who’, ‘Victoria’), the broadcaster has announced.
Inspired by real events, ‘The Serpent’ tells the remarkable story of how the conman and murderer Charles Sobhraj (Rahim) was brought to justice. Posing as a gem dealer, Sobhraj and his girlfriend Marie-Andrée Leclerc (Coleman) travelled across Thailand, Nepal and India in 1975 and 1976, carrying out a spree of crimes on the Asian “Hippie Trail” and becoming the chief suspects in a series of murders of young Western travellers.
As Sobhraj repeatedly slips from the grasp of authorities around the world, Herman Knippenberg (Billy Howle – ‘MotherFatherSon’, ‘Dunkirk’), a junior diplomat at the Dutch Embassy in Bangkok, unwittingly walks into his intricate web of crime. Knippenberg sets off an extraordinary chain of events that will see Sobhraj become Interpol’s most wanted man, with arrest warrants in multiple continents.
Alongside Rahim, Coleman, and Howle, Ellie Bamber (‘Les Misérables’, ‘Nocturnal Animals’) stars as Angela Knippenberg. Newcomer Amesh Edireweera, Mathilde Warnier (‘The Widow’), Gregoire Isvarine (‘The Inside Game’), and Tim McInnerny (‘Game of Thrones’, ‘Strike’, ‘Blackadder’) also star.
‘The Serpent’ is an eight-part limited series. Commissioned by BBC One, it is produced by Mammoth Screen, part of ITV Studios, and is a co-production between BBC One and Netflix. It is penned by ‘Ripper Street’ writers Richard Warlow and Toby Finlay, directed by Tom Shankland (‘Les Misérables’, ‘House of Cards’, ‘Ripper Street’) and Hans Herbots (‘Riviera’, ‘The Spiral’, ‘Cobra’), produced by Stephen Smallwood, and executive produced by Richard Warlow, Tom Shankland, Preethi Mavahalli and Damien Timmer for Mammoth Screen, Lucy Richer for the BBC and will be handled by Carolyn Newman for Netflix.
‘The Serpent’ premieres New Year’s Day at 9pm on BBC One and BBC iPlayer in the UK. The series will later be available outside of the UK and Ireland on Netflix.
