MAKING THE SERPENT
Director Tom Shankland discusses the challenges of transporting viewers back in time to the 1970s South East Asia hippie trail, in his chilling new BBC adaption of conman and serial killer Charles Sobhraj’s crimes
Sharper Than a Serpent’s Tooth
BBC One's true-crime drama The Serpent introduces to Nadine (Mathilde Warnier) and Remi Girs (Grégoire Isvarine), who live next door to serial killer Charles Sobhraj(Tahar Rahim in The Serpent cast).
THE SERPENT is the new true-crime series on BBC One and the BBC iPlayer. Billy Howle portrays Herman Knippenberg but what happened to Herman and where is he now?
The Serpent on BBC is based on the harrowing crimes of French serial killer, Charles Sobhraj (played by Tahar Rahim). Dutch junior diplomat Herman Knippenberg (Billy Howle), found himself in a cat and mouse chase with Sobhraj, building a case against the killer throughout the 1970s with his wife Angela Knippenberg (Ellie Bamber). What happened to Herman Knippenberg and where is Herman now?
It was 1977 and my boyfriend and I were working as journalists in New York. I was 23 and Richard Neville, who later became my husband, was 33. Richard, who had already achieved notoriety in the UK with his anti-establishment Oz magazine, was offered a contract to write a book about Charles Sobhraj, a young French Vietnamese man who had just been arrested for murder after an international manhunt. Forever enterprising, the first thing Sobhraj had done after his arrest was sell the rights to his life story to a Bangkok businessman, who sold them on to Random House, who asked Richard to immediately get to Delhi. The case would become a sensation, involving trickery, drugs, gems, gun running, corruption, dramatic prison escapes and a glamorous female accomplice who was photographed wearing big sunglasses and holding a fluffy dog. “Death Stalks the Hippy trail!” read one headline.
