If you missed the numerous books, articles and documentaries about him, and the fictionalised version seen in the BBC drama The Serpent in 2021: Charles Sobhraj was convicted of killing two people, but is thought to have killed many more during a spree in the 1970s. He befriended naive tourists who were travelling on the “hippy trail” in south Asia, before drugging them and stealing their passports and money.
Sobhraj admits the drugging and robbing; that he would often then kill his victims is something he now denies, although he did confess it when interviewed by Richard Neville for a biography (co-authored with Julie Clarke) that became a worldwide bestseller in 1979. Sobhraj has never been tried in Thailand, where many of his alleged killings took place, but has served time for murder in India and Nepal.
The latter sentence ended on 23 December 2022, which means Sobhraj is at large, and he’s available for interview. The Real Serpent: Investigating a Serial Killer sees director David Howard spend several months circling Sobhraj, getting to know him. In his effort to prise open the notoriously disarming and evasive career criminal, Howard calls in reinforcements: former Metropolitan police detective Jackie Malton and forensic psychologist Paul Britton each sit down with Sobhraj, respectively probing for facts and digging for motivation.
We are, then, in that subsection of the true-crime documentary that we might call the “crack a nut” show. Series that have scored an interview with the person we believe to be a killer have an entirely different texture to those that merely unfurl the narrative. The godfathers of the genre are The Jinx, where Robert Durst blurted out that he did it in the final episode, and The Staircase, where Michael Peterson – who was convicted of the manslaughter of his wife, but maintains his innocence – remained so eerily confident throughout that it felt as if the programme itself was under his direction.
So, distasteful as this may be, the success of The Real Serpent depends on the showbiz attributes of Sobhraj as an antagonist. The visuals are strong: at the end of a bizarre early sequence in which the programme temporarily fits him with a disguise so that he can roam London incognito, it becomes clear that although the silly stick-on beard is new, what we thought was a ludicrous wig is either Sobhraj’s own hair, or a ludicrous wig he wears all the time. Thus the interrogations that subsequently form the meat of the series are with a guy sporting a barnet somewhere between Michael Fabricant and a 1970s Corrie “barmaid”.
Episode one’s grillings are, however, more frustrating than beguiling. Malton tries to go hard on the confessions in the Neville book, which Sobhraj counters with the weak, vague argument that he was stitched up. What he means by this, however, is not quite clarified, because Sobhraj derails the interview by constantly interrupting Malton, often with the accusation that she is interrupting him. Malton allows herself to become exasperated.
Britton, the psychologist, seems a better bet, with his patient, almost sing-song locution – precise, assertive, slightly paternal – giving the impression of someone who has snared many a monster. He searches for a soft underbelly, asking about Sobhraj’s mother. “A very selfish woman,” Sobhraj says. “I cannot make myself forgive her.” Certain that he is on to something, Britton places an empty chair next to Sobhraj, tells him to imagine that the chair is Mum, and asks what he would like to say to her. This brilliant plan turns out to have one tiny flaw: Sobhraj refuses to do it, saying that all that stuff is “private”. Oh.
The Real Serpent is diligent in its accumulation of evidence against Sobhraj, some of it brand new, leaving us in little to no doubt that he is a multiple murderer. But that only makes the interviews more maddening: as the three-part series goes on, you experience the same helpless anger as when watching a modern-day political interview. Because, just like a government minister who has been given a ridiculous line to recite and cannot be made to deviate by facts or argument, Sobhraj has realised that swearing solemnly that black is white and up is down can, in a one-on-one scenario where no judge or jury will name a winner at the end, take you a long way if you have enough shameless gumption.
The real problem for The Real Serpent is that the 79-year-old Sobhraj, while certainly not as clever and elusive as he thinks he is, also isn’t as complex or mercurial as a programme like this needs him to be. Once you get used to his calmness when refusing to properly engage with his interviewers, there isn’t much else he is willing to let you discover: his spoiling techniques are effective but boringly unsophisticated. In a true crime show promising intrigue and spectacle, that’s criminal.
The Real Serpent: Investigating a Serial Killer aired on Channel 4 and is available online
