

He calls it a “fact-is-stranger-than-fiction-to-the-power-of-about-100 situation”: “ to do what you always do when you’re researching stories, which is do some conflations, light a fire under certain things and also - and I’ve never experienced this before - pedal back on some of the strangeness.”Ĭoproducer Paul Testar, who joined the development process in 2014, was tasked with accumulating research to support the storytelling.

“Real life is infuriating, because it doesn’t behave in the way stories do,” says writer and producer Richard Warlow, who began working on the series in 2013 alongside director Tom Shankland. His pursuit leads him to Sobhraj ( Tahar Rahim) and his accomplices, including Marie-Andrée Leclerc (Jenna Coleman) and Ajay Chowdhury (Amesh Edireweera), who have been drugging, robbing and killing tourists on the so-called Hippie Trail. Set in 1970s Bangkok, the series, which first aired on the BBC earlier this year, follows Dutch diplomat Herman Knippenberg (Billy Howle) as he investigates the disappearance of a pair of Dutch backpackers. Netflix’s true crime drama “The Serpent,” premiering Friday, may seem unbelievable - but the creators actually had to temper the bizarre real-life history of con man and serial killer Charles Sobhraj.
