This resort is ours!BBC series shows Marbella as it should be (sort-of)

The first episode begins with a stunning scene in Torrequebrada at the Trocadero Restaurant. It then moves to Marbella for the remaining episodes.

There has never been a more beautiful resort with its golden streets, leafy gardens or La Concha mountain.

This is BBC’s most popular drama. This City Is OursThe film was shot in Marbella as well as nearby La Linea and Antequera during a few month last year.

This edgy, crime-filled drama is set to begin filming a new series soon, which will also be filmed on the Costa del Sol. It has received amazing reviews from IMDB (8/10), and an impressive Rotten Tomatoes score of 91%.

It’s one the best TV series in recent years, right up there with Breaking Bad and Sopranos. The script is clever and taut with many twists and surprises.

One of the most memorable scenes is when Sean Bean (playing the crime boss Ronnie Phelan), while drunk and lying on a sunbed by a Nueva Andalucia pool, was executed in cold-blood.

This is a prophetic moment that leads to a struggle of wills between Ronnie’s as-hard-as nails deputy Michael Kavanagh, played by James Nelson-Joyce.

The programme – based on a Liverpool drug gang – begins during a tense meeting with the local ‘Amigos gang’, who are based on the Costa del Sol.

When discussing the next shipment of cocaine to Liverpool, is it fair that the Spanish mafia living in beautiful mountain villas near Marbella get a smaller percentage? Or is it that the Scousers are taking the importation risk?

Wrapped in bananas, the shipment sails through the border but is then hijacked and seized by Ronnie’s rogue son.  

The drama begins.

The scenes in Spain – among the best I’ve watched in my two decades here – show the coast in a fabulous light and frequently include a good sense of humour.

There is a great line about ‘great cava being better than champagne’ and then a funny incident at a service station on the AP-7 motorway when they can’t get more than a ‘jamon y queso bocadillo’

Kavanagh mutters “It’s bloody ham and chees” as he drives the corpse of his former employer north to Bilbao.

Understandably the gang are always on the lookout for rivals as well as the law… “What are Spanish nick’s like these days?” One asks. “It can’t be worse than Scrubs!” “Can’t be any worse than Scrubs!”

The best takeaway – oft repeated – is the line about executed gang member, Davy, who officially is ‘sent to Estepona!’ To do some business.

This is a clear reference to the British father NAMES and his son NAMES, who went missing in Estepona several years ago.

There are frequent references to Davy ‘going to meet a friend in Estepona’ and always for some reason in the rival resort to Marbella.

Even when they get back to Liverpool by episode four the links to the Costa del Sol continue when they visit a tanning salon and bathhouse called, appropriately, ‘Marbella Sun’.

Is it a coincidence that Estepona Kinahan’s sidekick NAME Kavanagh shares the same name with the hero Michael Kavanagh?

I can’t get enough of the second series, when I know there will be trips to Morocco.