John Hannah: ‘TV cops are hard-drinking loners – my new Benidorm detective is different’

If you switch on Channel 5 tonight, you’ll find humorous Scotsman John Hannah as Dennis, a humorous Scotsman manning a Benidorm boozer for Brits abroad.

Having retired from the police force, his days are spent rivalling punters on who can run the bar dry first.

Hannah’s no stranger to heavy-drinking loner detectives – John Rebus, Jack Cloth – but he singles out his Benidorm is Murder character’s sense of humour as a point of difference.

‘He recognises when something is ironic or weird, which I don’t think you get to see a lot in TV cops,’ the 64-year-old tells Metro. ‘They’re serious-thinking loners. Divorcees, suffering some existential moment.’

Dennis does have a bit of that going on too. Until Rosa (Carolina Bécquer), a Spaniard who has devoured the Midsomer Murders back-catalogue, comes knocking for a job. When she learns Dennis is a former detective, she’s made up.

Further down the Benidorm strip, past the stands selling novelty hats and around roaming mobility scooters, Robbie Williams has fallen to his death from a hotel balcony.

Not the Robbie Williams. This is the frontman of Mis-take That. They don’t quite have the name recognition of the act they’re a tribute to, but in Benidorm, they’re the big cheese.

Fingers are pointed at Gary Barlow (naturally?), but Rosa suspects he’s innocent. She convinces grumbling Dennis to crack the impersonator-on-impersonator crime.

Benidorm is Murder was shot on location in the Spanish seaside town, whose reputation precedes it. Bécquer admits that, as a Spaniard, ‘you hear all sorts of things’ about the place.

‘They’ve kind of just ceded it to the British, haven’t they?’ laughs Hannah, who says his late working class parents would have loved holidaying there.

Filming out on the strip was not as chaotic as you might imagine, even if pints for breakfast are customary over there.

‘At first we were wary,’ Hannah admits. ‘But people were no different from filming in any other city. We were completely awry in our assumptions that it might get a bit leery.’

Most passersby were curious, wondering if the production was a Benidorm reboot or if they could get involved. Several regular holidaygoers get their five seconds in slice of life cutaways.

Given the number of crime capers that play out in uber-wealthy settings, Hannah describes the blue-collar focus here as ‘a real relief’.

‘I left drama school in 1985, working class, and it felt like that was a really good time,’ he recalls. ‘There were so many shows that were on, Boys from the Blackstuff, telling working class stories. 

‘It seems like we’ve moved away from that. If you do upstairs downstairs, they tend to concentrate on upstairs. It might just be a fashion. Most people that watch television don’t live in Downton Abbey, so you watch things like that for escapism.’

Every bar has a tribute act of some sort, or a stripper of some sort, or a juggler of some sort. It’s lively.

He returns to it when we discuss the intergenerational Holmes and Watson dynamic between Dennis and Rosa, recalling how quickly he had to get along with his elders while working on building sites as a teenager.

While it was Bécquer’s ‘first job’, at least on British TV, and his ‘447,000th’ (‘Getting old,’ he says), there was never a call sheet hierarchy. 

‘We had a similar relationship in real life,’ Bécquer agrees. ‘He was a mentor to me. When I got there, I didn’t know what I was doing. He really took me under his wing and gave me so much advice.’

After losing his train of thought, Hannah quips: ‘As I get into my dotage, Carolina reminds me of what the scene’s about, if I happen to wander off and think it’s something else that I’m doing.’

There are vague allusions to production issues on the six-parter, but these seem to have derived from shooting on location, with a crew who weren’t first-language English speakers. 

Director Simon Delaney had an exacting vision for the series. Hannah refers to him as ‘particular’ and ‘precise’, noting the number of takes involved. There’s a charged atmosphere between them at the show’s screening, but discussions are already underway for a second season.

Despite the pull of the surrounds, the stars didn’t go full-on method in Benidorm. Hannah was necking alcohol free beers at the various bars and the core cast stayed in the historic Old Town, rather than the ‘Blackpool, Vegas-y land’, as Hannah dubs it.

Those who did explore what the city has to offer were the guest cast, which includes Denise Welch (Hannah worked with her at the Newcastle Playhouse in the ‘80s, but hadn’t seen her since) and Alistair McGowan.

Bécquer says they returned with ‘colourful stories’. Hannah puts a bit of meat on the bone: ‘Every bar has a tribute act of some sort, or a stripper of some sort, or a juggler of some sort. It’s lively. But all good fun. 

‘Well, maybe apart from the stripper. I wish they’d never come back and told us about that. Let me just say Sticky Vicky. Other than that, you really don’t want to know.’

Benidorm Is Murder airs tonight at 9pm on Channel 5.