The Mallorca Files: what happens when a daytime BBC1 show hits the big time?

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It is rare for a daytime TV drama to leap to a big streaming platform, but The Mallorca Files had been punching below its weight in BBC1’s early afternoon slot. It should really have been an evening show.
Now on Amazon Prime Video it has lost none of its cheerfulness and is basically an upbeat splash of crime in the sun, making Mallorca look temptingly beautiful and very visitable. Which the anti-tourism demonstrators holding placards saying “Tourist go home” no doubt welcome like a hole in the head. “Oh great! A TV show making Mallorca look even more attractive to tourists,” I imagine they’re saying sarcastically (in Spanish obviously).
But Palma does look tasty and this, combined with the unlikely buddy cop duo of uptight Brit Miranda Blake (Elen Rhys) and laid-back German Max Winter (Julian Looman), means this drama simply works. Even though it is, like Death in Paradise, knowingly corny, using 1970s-style opening credits and every local person conveniently speaking perfect English.
The opening episode started where it ended — with a sexy speedboat chase, Winter and Blake being plunged into the water and in danger of being rammed. We then went back three days when the pair were recruited to pose as an uber-rich couple to nail an international property scammer.
This series has teased the possibility of a romance between this couple (although Max has been asked by his girlfriend to move to Madrid) and at one point Miranda asked him to kiss her so they looked more convincing. “It would mean absolutely nothing,” she said, looking like it would mean very much indeed.
But they turned it into a comedy moment; him left puckering up while she turned away. I don’t think it would work if they cop off. There was a very nice, if silly, twist and it all ended good-naturedly. It is an unchallenging 45 minutes of escapism and there’s nothing wrong with that.★★★☆☆
Classic Movies (Sky Arts) was an absolute treat, putting that trembling “epic of the human heart” Brief Encounter under the microscope to examine why this study of unfulfilled yearning and stiff upper lip Britishness was, and still is, hailed as a masterpiece.
The presenter, Ian Nathan, chose his interviewees well as the discussion took us from David Lean’s radical idea to start the 1945 film at the end with Laura and Alec’s tortured, ruined goodbye in a railway station café while an annoying acquaintance prattles on, then telling the story in flashback from Laura’s perspective, Celia Johnson’s saucer-like eyes and eloquent face a landscape of pain, yearning and frustrated passion. As the experts said, she could communicate a complex range of emotions with one look, the camera homed in on her face for most of the film.
It reminded us that it has been much parodied over the years, but then didn’t provide any examples. I didn’t mind this because I like these weighty, non-gimmicky discussions, which are like an arts lecture.
The curious thing about Brief Encounter is that little happens and yet it never gets boring, no matter how many times you see it. This is down to Johnson and Trevor Howard, but also Lean’s moody cinematography which, as was explained, turned suburban Britain into film noir.★★★★☆
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