The first images of Tahar Rahim, Jenna Coleman, Billy Howle and Ellie Bamber in forthcoming crime series The Serpent have been released, ahead of the show’s debut later this year.

The eight-part series will premiere on BBC One and BBC iPlayer in the UK, and on Netflix internationally.

Inspired by real events, The Serpent tells the story of how Sobhraj (Rahim) was captured. As the chief suspect in unsolved murders of young Western travellers across India, Thailand and Nepal’s Hippie Trail in 1975 and 1976, Sobhraj had repeatedly slipped from the grasp of authorities worldwide to become Interpol’s most wanted man, with arrest warrants on three different continents.

When Herman Knippenberg (Howle), a junior diplomat at the Dutch Embassy in Bangkok, unwittingly walked into Sobhraj’s intricate web of crime, he set off an extraordinary chain of events that saw Knippenberg seek to bring Sobhraj to justice for his crimes.