Superb but depraved: BBC1’s The Serpent reviewed

The Serpent is the best BBC drama series in ages — god knows how it slipped through the net — but I still think it most unlikely that I shall stick it through to the final episode. It’s not the style that’s wrong but the subject matter: do we really want to spend eight hours of life in the company of a smug, ruthless serial killer who murders at least 12 people — and more or less gets away with it?

Up to a point The Serpent has addressed this problem by trying to make the central figure not the killer, Charles Sobhraj, but the persistent Dutch junior diplomat, Herman Knippenberg, who eventually nabs him. But that still doesn’t quite remove the nasty taste you get from watching dreamy-eyed innocents on the hippy trail being seduced by Sobhraj’s patter, prior to being brutally killed in any number of hideous ways, including drowning, strangulation and being burned alive.

It’s especially painful viewing for those of us of a certain age, who might conceivably have found themselves in scenarios like the one so cruelly exploited by Sobhraj.