Majorca-filmed drama tops New Year

Majorca's role as a film location has been firmly established this year and the island and the talents of its growing film production industry will star in the New Year on Channel 4 when it broadcasts the two-part dramatisation of Evelyn Waugh's Second World War trilogy Sword of Honour. Shooting for the four-hour drama started in Majorca in April and was completed in Scotland. Produced by TalkBack Productions and filmed on the island with the local facilities company Palma Pictures, Sword of Honour which features hundreds of local extras, will be shown back-to-back on Channel four on January 2 and 3, as one of the highlights of their New Year programming. The production provided Palma Pictures, which has just moved into its new Marratxi studios, where the interior of a WWII destroyer battle ship was built for the drama, the chance to show off how Majorca is an ideal film location. Scenes set in Crete, North Africa, Egypt and war-torn Italy were all filmed in Majorca and there was no shortage of local extras keen to enlist to play the parts of retreating allied soldiers. The production is also important for Majorca's developing film industry because of its high quality. The drama was adapted for television by the award-winning novelist William Boyd, author of A Good Man in Africa and The New Confession. He also dramatised Scoop in the 1980s for ITV and is a long admirer of Waugh's work.