THE Serpent viewers have slammed the BBC’s new serial killer drama over its “jumpy” timeline and slow pace.
The hotly anticipated series is based on true events that took place in Thailand, Nepal and India during the 1970s.
Tahar Rahim portrays killer Charles Sobhraj with Doctor Who’s Jenna Coleman starring as his besotted lover Marie-Andrée Leclerc, and the mini-series follows Charles’ reign of terror as he drugs and kills backpackers before robbing their dead bodies.
Last night the moody drama premiered with Charles denying his crimes, before cutting to desperate investigators realising that a serial killer was on the loose.
Then in a series of flashbacks he embarks on one of his kills, meeting and kidnapping a wannabe nun loaded with travellers cheques.
But the flurry of scenes, which included real footage of his victims, left viewers struggling to catch up with the story.
One fan summed up sentiments, writing on Twitter: “The intermittent subtitles and the back and forth timeline was pretty annoying and unnecessary.”
Another wrote: “When it says 2 months earlier, is that 2 months earlier from the 4 months earlier that we had earlier, or is it 2 months earlier then the 2 months later that we had earlier?”
Another said: “WTF was going on with that ending, why did they take her to that strip club drug her and drowns her?”
Jenna Coleman revealed the new backpacking murder drama was the ‘scariest challenge’ of her career.
So we’ve had 2 months later – and now it’s 4 months earlier. WHY do they do this? So bloody confusing. #TheSerpent
— Rob Driscoll (@robdriscoll1) January 1, 2021
All this two months/four months stuff on #TheSerpent is driving me nuts. Why couldn't they have just picked a month and said 'August' and then 'June' and 'April' etc. Am irritated now
— Zoe Anderson (@ZoeAnderson) January 1, 2021
When it says 2 months earlier, is that 2 months earlier from the 4 months earlier that we had earlier, or is it 2 months earlier then the 2 months later that we had earlier? #TheSerpent
— Rob Driscoll (@robdriscoll1) January 1, 2021
Episode 1 of #TheSerpent
—
2 months later
4 months earlier
6 months later
2 months earlier pic.twitter.com/2YCl7ctV2N
€ M M 4
(@Emma_Viveash) January 2, 2021
Speaking about her new role, Jenna revealed one of her biggest hurdles was nailing Marie-Andrée’s French-Canadian accent.
She said: “Both her French-Canadian accent when speaking English, and then her French-Canadian accent when speaking French. To try and find that was really hard.
“Many of the actors I was filming with are French themselves, so to try and work authentically within that realm was a big challenge.
“It was probably professionally one of the scariest challenges – to go from learning it from scratch to within two months being on set opposite Tahar and speaking in French. A good challenge, but a big challenge.”
Charles was eventually caught and jailed for his crimes, as was his accomplice Marie-Andrée.
