Dominik Scherrer: Scoring The Serpent

The story of Charles Sobhraj, a Eurasian serial killer who would drug and rob travellers – particularly young, hippie backpackers in Thailand – required a particular calibre of musical score. The BBC and Netflix’s hit show The Serpent enlisted veteran composer Dominik Scherrer to provide the music for this harrowing mid-’70s tale. Having scored many popular shows such as The Missing and Ripper Street, the Swiss-born artist opens up about scoring a serial killer with musical subtlety.

Based in Shoreditch, East London, Scherrer is explaining how breaking into the world of film music is often a steady climb, rather than a sudden breakthrough moment.

“It was a gradual thing,” he says. “Also, you kind of learn as you go along as well. I was scoring a lot of short films, and then they just got longer and bigger. Initially, it was string quartet scores, and then I could record orchestra for some of them. Then I had the first feature film, it was called Appetite. It was an arthouse film and I had the budget for an orchestra on that one. And then things gradually grew.”

Knowing Scherrer has composed for BBC programmes quite a few times, I ask how it feels to have worked for such an institution on several occasions.

“I guess if you're doing those kind of high-end drama productions like I do, it's basically either BBC or ITV,” he explains. “Or now Netflix or Amazon Studios, and often, it is a combination of them. For a long time I did ITV as well, Miss Marple and things like that. And then something like The Serpent is actually made by Mammoth Screen that is owned by ITV and was produced for the BBC and Netflix. So it all often hangs together anyway.”

Looking across Scherrer’s lengthy CV, we talk about the wonderful breadth of his work:

“When you do one thing and people know it well, then people do start to typecast you a little bit. Sometimes it can be hard to cross borders. For example, I haven't actually scored comedy in a while. I was thinking that would be quite fun again because I tend to do quite serious stuff now. People have almost forgotten that I can be quite fun as well!”

I’m keen to know how Scherrer landed the gig for The Serpent, which stars Jenna Coleman (Dr. Who, Victoria) and Tahar Rahim (A Prophet, The Mauritanian).

“I'd worked with Tom Shanklin, the lead director, before on several shows. He was lead director on Ripper Street and The Missing. So he already told me about this idea years ago because it was a story that had been going around his head.

"He was keen to find a way to adapt it to the screen. Which meant I was on board with this project early and I could start writing themes before they even started shooting.”

Being given the time and space to do the preliminary musical work for the series wasn’t the only benefit from Scherrer’s long-term working relationship with director Tom Shanklin – it also comes down to the mutual trust and respect they’ve earned from each other.

Which saved Scherrer from what is often the bane of film composer’s lives: the dreaded temp-track. It’s the scenario in which a director places a temporary piece of music over a scene until the composer replaces it. But often the director becomes so attached to the temp-track (more often than not a well-known piece by a famous composer such as Hans Zimmer) that they more or less ask the composer they are working with to essentially copy and paste the temporary music.

“When I have some sketches down I can send those to the cutting room,” he explains. “Then they can use some of my music while they're putting together the cut, and they don't have to use other music. But it’s true, temp love is a big thing! I’ve had times where the temp-music is actually my own earlier music, and they almost want you to imitate yourself – but an imitation can only ever be slightly worse, or a lot worse!

"Often when I hear new film music I can actually hear what the temp-track was, because I’ll have had the same one myself. I heard that for a while; my soundtrack to The Missing had apparently become the kind of temp du jour in L.A. And I have seen some shows where I thought, ‘God, this is like my track. That's strange!’”

Scherrer didn’t feel musical themes for the different characters would work for The Serpent. This is because he feels this can make them start to feel like theme park characters.

“It often doesn't work, because sooner or later those characters are going to meet, and what are you going to do then? It's more the story strands that I want to score. Because this show is so much about Charles, you couldn't just have one theme, but it's certain aspects of his psyche that have the themes. Because he was known as ‘The Serpent’ at the time and with that being the name of the show, I wanted to give a lot of the music this slithery, snakelike quality also.”