Really good but not the timeline hopping... What a brilliant crime drama, The Serpent had me gripped in the first few minutes and the "Fingerprint File" by the Rolling Stones came on, I knew I was going to love this series.
The only problem I had with it was the jumping back and forth in time...
"November 1975", then
"4 months later" (right that must be March 1976), then
"4 months earlier" (okay doing the maths while watching what's going on, that must be back to November 1975), then
"4 months later" (oh, that must be forward to March 1976), then
"2 months earlier" (hang on... February, January, that must be January 1976), then
"2 months later" (oh back to March 1976 again)...
Get my drift? Confused? You will be when you start trying to work out the dates!
I just found the timeline hopping a bit confusing and hard work to think what month and what year it was. Why not just put the month and the year? It makes it a whole lot easier for viewers.
The story is about a real-life serial killer and conman called Charles Sobharj who drugged, murdered and robbed tourists along the hippie trail in the 1970s to fund his lifestyle. His lover called Marie-Andree Leclerc was his accomplice who helped him with his crimes.
In the meantime, there is Herman Knippenberg, a diplomat at the Dutch Embassy in Bangkok who starts looking into the disappearance of a Dutch couple while they were backpacking in Thailand. Alongside his wife Angela and a Belgian diplomat called Paul Siemons, they begin to look at a series of murders across the hippie trail all leading them to one man, Charles Sobharj.
Having grown up during the 70s, I always thought fashion in the 1970s was probably the worst ever! But the outfits worn in The Serpent are well co-ordinated, they make the 70s look glamorous (think 1970s Vogue magazine) and that everyone had great taste in clothes (I know first-hand this not to be true because they definitely didn't!) And the music is far out man!!
The backdrop to some of the scenes are beautiful and filmed in such a way, they look how I imagine the countries looked was before modernisation. There is also some old footage used from the 1970s where new scenes are blended in with the old which I thought was very clever.
Charles Sobharaj comes across as a good looking, charismatic man who was your best mate when in reality, he is a cold-blooded, manipulative psychopath.
What I'm not sure about is Marie-Andree Leclerc... Did she help her lover because she was petrified of him? Or was she so in love with him that love is blind, she was prepared to do anything to keep him?
Apart from a couple dodgy Dutch accents (why didn't they get real Dutch actors?) and the timeline hopping, I really enjoyed The Serpent. If you haven't watched it already, I highly recommend watching this series.