This resort is OURS!: BBC series shows Marbella in the perfect light (sort of)

IT kicks off with an amazing scene at Trocadero restaurant just up the road in Torrequebrada, then spends the rest of the next few episodes in Marbella.

Under its distinctive La Concha mountain, the leafy gardens and golden streets of the resort have never looked more glossy.

This is the BBC’s hit drama, This City is Ours, filmed around Marbella, nearby La Linea and Antequera over a few months last year.

Soon set to start filming a second series, also expected to be on the Costa del Sol, this edgy crime drama has taken the TV watching world by storm with amazing reviews on IMDB (8/10) and an impressive 91% on Rotten Tomatoes.

And it’s one of the very best television series of the last few years (nearly up there with Breaking Bad or Sopranos), with a clever, taut script with plenty of twists and turns and many a shocking moment.

One of the best is when the main star Sean Bean (playing crime boss Ronnie Phelan) gets executed in cold blood, while lying drunk on a sun lounger by a pool in Nueva Andalucia.

It’s a prophetic scene and leads to a battle of wills between his son and Ronnie’s hard-as-nails deputy, our hero (sort of) 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.

Discussing the next shipment of cocaine to Liverpool, should it have a smaller cut for the experienced Spanish mafia, who live in stunning mountain villas around Marbella. Or, as is agreed, the risk of importation taken by the Scousers?

Wrapped in bananas the shipment finally sails through but is then hijacked by the rogue son of Ronnie.  

And then the drama really 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’

“It’s always bloody ham and cheese,” moans Kavanagh as he’s driving the dead body of his former boss 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?” Asks one. “Can’t be any worse than the Scrubs!” Comes the reply.

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

This must surely be a reference to the British father and son NAMES who vanished in Estepona a few 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’.

Are there also coincidences that the hero Michael Kavanagh has the same name as the famous Estepona Kinahan sidekick NAME Kavanagh.

I can’t wait for the second series when I’m sure they’ll be some trips across the pond to Morocco.

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