I thought I'd offer a high-tech alternative for certain varieties. If $X$ is smooth and projective over a field $k$ then Bondal and van den Bergh give a proof here that $D^b(\mathrm{Coh}X)$ is saturated which is a strong representability condition on cohomological/homological functors to the category of $k$ vector spaces. It follows immediately that $D^b(\mathrm{Coh}X)$ has a Serre functor by using the fact that $Hom(A,-)^*$ is representable for every bounded complex of coherent sheaves $A$.
Greg Stevenson
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