Season 2 of The Mallorca Files is guaranteed to bring some much-needed light to BBC One’s winter line-up
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he first series of BBC One’s The Mallorca Files aired at the tail end of 2019 and proved a huge hit with critics and daytime audiences. On the surface, it’s fluff, but it’s also clever, funny, and beautifully shot and acted. More than anything, The Mallorca Files recalls the wildly successful 1980s comedy drama Moonlighting, in which Bruce Willis and Cybill Shepherd sleuthed and flirted in equal measure. This is no accident, as the show’s creator Dan Sefton admitted at an RTS event in mid-January: “Definitely, just totally stole it. From the very beginning, part of the discussion was that we don’t really do those buddy cop, light crime shows any more. I grew up with Moonlighting – loved it, it was fantastic.” Sefton, a former doctor who penned ITV’s The Good Karma Hospital and BBC thriller Trust Me, recalled the one-line pitch for the series: “Essentially, it was German and British cop on Mallorca.” The tweak, which confounds any lazy stereotyping, is that it is the German who is gregarious and loves life but proves less than efficient as a detective. Sefton was thrilled at the reception for the first series: “[We] wanted to make a fun, light-hearted, sexy, sunny show… and I think the vast majority of people really bought into that.” Series 2, which began its new run on BBC One at the beginning of the month, offers more of the “will they, won’t they get it together” relationship between Welsh cop DC Miranda Blake (Elen Rhys) and her German colleague, DC Max Winter. The latter is played by the Vienna-born and -raised Julian Looman, a new face to British TV audiences. Rhys is best known for BBC drama Ordinary Lies. The Mallorca Files offers some muchneeded escapism during the UK’s third coronavirus lockdown. “We can’t wait to get it into the schedules,” said BBC daytime commissioning editor Helen Munson at an RTS preview in early January. “Winter is pretty dark and
The Mallorca Files
Daytime fun in the sun dreary, and you want a bit of lovely light and sunshine. But this year, more than ever, it’s so important – the sun and scenery are what we’re all craving.” The Balearic island landscape shares joint billing with Rhys and Looman. The producers, Clerkenwell Films and Cosmopolitan Pictures, worked closely with the island’s film body to find standout locations. “At the beginning,
when we started talking to the producers, we were a little bit worried [about] Mallorca as a crime set,” said Pedro Barbadillo, head of the Mallorca Film Commission. “But it’s a great way to show what locations Mallorca has to offer for other series and films. We are very happy to host the series.” Munson added: “Mallorca is very familiar to a lot of our audience but not
