If the first job of the police is to solve crimes, the second job of police procedurals sometimes is to have fun.
Okay, it sounds callous when you phrase it that way, but let’s be honest. As long as it’s mostly bad guys who are being mowed down, we television viewers enjoy having our cops being droll, witty, and clever along the way.
That makes it welcome news that the streaming service BritBox is importing The Mallorca Files, a British series that becomes available here starting Wednesday.
In keeping with another police procedural tradition, the show revolves around a mismatched team: British Detective Miranda Blake (Elen Rhys, top) and German Detective Max Winter (Julian Looman, top).
They’re thrown together through an unlikely series of events in luxurious and exotic Mallorca, which gives the show a flavor not entirely unlike the departing Hawaii Five-O.
There’s lots of warm weather and sunshine, a fact that Detective Blake notes when she tells Winter that a British criminal turned himself in because he wanted to be deported back to Britain.
“He missed the rain,” she says. “He’s British. Who could live in a place like this?”
She doesn’t deliver that line as a joke. She hardly delivers any line as a joke, which is why she immediately becomes terribly endearing.
She’s a lone wolf, and a workaholic seemingly laser-focused on her job with no visible life outside it. She’s also determined to do everything by the book.
Winter, on the other hand, regards the book as a suggestion, not a mandate. He also has a very active life outside of police work. In fact, he has just finished making out with his girlfriend in the airport when the storyline takes the first of the hard twists that eventually pair him up with Blake.
As professional couples go, they’re not completely unrelated to the teams in The Mentalistor The Bridge or, for that matter, The Killing or The X-Files, minus the supernatural element.
And yes, even while Blake spends most of their early time being exasperated at her new partner, it’s clear that we will have a will they/won’t they element. No point in fighting it, Miranda.
In any case, this isn’t a remake of any other specific show. Rhys and Looman carve out their own set of quirks and attitudes before the first episode has wrapped.
While we don’t get to know the supporting cast very well at first because of the focus on Blake and Winter, Maria Fernandez Ache seems promising as Ines Villegas, chief of Palma Police and thus the new and somewhat reluctant boss of these two outsiders.
Tabata Cerezo plays Carmen Lorenzo, Max’s girlfriend, who has no intention of being replaced. She also has some leverage, because her father Joan (Carlos Olalla) owns a bar in town. Detectives trying to solve crimes in Mallorca would seem to find that bar a valuable place to have contacts.
While Mallorca Files doesn’t skimp on the body count, it often has an air as breezy as the Mallorca beaches. For viewers who could use a good escape, watching The Mallorca Filesis a decent and affordable substitute for flying there.