The Intense Crime Drama Series You Need To Binge On Netflix

If you like British crime dramas with an international flavor, you should check out The Serpent, Netflix's latest collaboration with the BBC. The limited series began streaming on April 2 and is currently sitting at #6 on the streaming service's daily Top 10 chart in the U.S.

The Serpent has gotten mixed-to-positive reviews, and currently has a 61% "Fresh" rating on Rotten Tomatoes. The series was mostly filmed on location in Thailand, though it had to be finished in England after a five-month break due to COVID-19, according to Variety. It looks and feels authentic in its sets, costuming, and casting of actors who look like they're from the '70s, though it takes a few liberties with the absolute truth of its story. It's far from a perfect show, but it's a suspenseful, compulsively watchable crime drama that gets better as it goes along.

Here's why Netflix's The Serpent is worth a watch.

The Serpent is an eight-episode series based on the true story of Charles Sobhraj, a French national who murdered several young Western tourists on the so-called "hippie trail" in Thailand, India, and Nepal in the 1970s. Sobhraj, with the aid of his French Canadian girlfriend Marie-Andrée Leclerc and other witting and unwitting accomplices, would befriend travelers and then drug, rob, and kill them. Authorities didn't particularly care, and it took the investigatory efforts of a Dutch diplomat and his wife to bring Sobhraj's crimes to light. 

The series stars The Mauritanian and The Looming Tower's Tahar Rahim as Sobhraj, a charismatic and sociopathic criminal. Doctor Who's Jenna Coleman plays Sobhraj's psychologically dependent girlfriend, who knows the life of crime she's caught up in is wrong, but goes along with it due to her obsession with him. Finally, Star Wars: The Rise of Skywalker's Billy Howle portrays Herman Knippenberg, a low-level attaché at the Dutch embassy in Thailand who begins an extracurricular investigation into the disappearance of two Dutch travelers with the assistance of his German wife, Angela (Nocturnal Animals' Ellie Bamber).

The Serpent is streaming now on Netflix.