Pictures of the real-life “Serpent”, the serial killer featured in a memorable 2021 BBC drama starring Tahar Rahim, wandering around London on a mini-break last weekend understandably made headlines. But if you studied the photos of a dodgy old man wearing an obvious wig (looking mostly like a dodgy old man wearing an obvious wig), you will have noted that they came from “Channel 4”.
The shock that Charles Sobhraj (who, in 1976, confessed to drugging, robbing and killing a series of young backpackers on the hippie trail in South-East Asia) was roaming free in Britain was somewhat tempered by the realisation that our awareness of this fact was part of a marketing campaign for a new TV series.
Lo and behold, a few days later, here comes Channel 4’s The Real Serpent: Investigating a Serial Killer. The PR campaign may have helped grab a few more viewers for the three-part true crime documentary, but it also lent the whole undertaking an air of gimmickry. (It didn’t help that The Real Serpent comes hot on the heels of Channel 4’s The Jury, part of a season of judicial jiggerypokery.)
The Real Serpent, we were assured, was Sobhraj “speaking out for the first time”. It was a monumental coup, though, one that’s been in the offing since 2016 when the director David Howard somehow managed to get in touch with Sobhraj in a Nepali prison. Our man had not been paid to go on camera, we were several times reminded. He was merely, “fed up of all the allegations”. And so, he said, “I’ve decided I’m going to put forward my facts and let the people decide.”