GlynThere is a particular noise a Benidorm living room makes on a Thursday night, and it started on the 30th of July. It is the noise of somebody sitting bolt upright and saying hang on, that’s the end of our road.
Benidorm Is Murder arrived on Channel 5 with John Hannah as Dennis Crown, a burnt-out British detective who has jacked the job in to run a bar on the front, and who keeps finding dead tourists in it. Carolina Bécquer plays Rosa, the barmaid, who is a true-crime obsessive and rather better at this than he is. Ariadna Cabrol is the Spanish detective who has to put up with the pair of them.
The opener pulled a little over two million viewers on the night. Episode two slid under a million and the trade press wrote it up as a collapse, then the seven-day figures came in and it turned out to be Channel 5’s second-best drama launch of the year. People are watching it. They are just watching it on a Sunday afternoon, which is the correct way to watch it.
But the reason it matters here is simpler than the ratings. It was shot on location, in Benidorm, in late 2025, and the production made almost no attempt to disguise anything. The bar is invented. Everything round it is not. Which means you can walk the whole thing in an afternoon, and most of it costs nothing.
The map
Nine locations, all of them within the town, laid out on the actual coastline rather than an artist’s impression of it.
1. Intempo
In the series: the skyline. It turns up again and again in the establishing shots, because of course it does.
What it actually is: the 47-storey twin tower with the great domed M on top, at the Poniente end. It is the tallest residential building in Benidorm and it spent years as the town’s most expensive embarrassment, half-finished and repossessed. Having finally found work as a television backdrop feels like the right ending for it. You cannot go in. You can see it from most of the town, which is rather the point.
2. Benidorm town hall
In the series: itself. No dressing up required.
What it actually is: the Ayuntamiento on the Plaça de SSMM Reyes de España, a two-minute walk from the Old Town. Worth a look on the way past rather than a trip of its own.
3. Hotel Primavera Park
In the series: the location of the first murder, in episode one.
What it actually is: a four-star hotel on Calle Primavera, just inland near the Parc de l’Aigüera. You will know it by the curved balconies. And here is the detail nobody in the production seems to have planned: on the seventeenth floor is Selvático, a rooftop bar with an infinity pool and a view from the sea to the Puig Campana. Hotel guests have it in the daytime, but it opens to everyone at night. So you can have a properly made cocktail on the roof of the building where the body turns up. Whether that is macabre or excellent probably depends on how many you have had.
4. Balcón del Mediterráneo
In the series: the panoramic shots, the ones that make the town look like somewhere you would move to.
What it actually is: the white balustraded viewpoint on the point where the castle used to stand, right at the end of the Old Town. Free, open, and the single most photographed spot in Benidorm. Go at either end of the day. At two in the afternoon in August it is a queue for a photograph.
5. Cala del Mal Pas
In the series: the little cove, used for the coastal shots.
What it actually is: the small sheltered beach tucked in below the castle, thirty seconds down the steps from the Balcón and somehow still missed by most people who visit. It is where the council puts the beach cinema in the summer. Bar Mal Pas sits just above it, with a terrace looking straight out at the water.
6. Torre Yago — Dennis’s bar
In the series: The Tavern, the bar Dennis runs and the closest thing the programme has to a home.
What it actually is: and this is the one people most want to know. The Tavern is not a real pub. It is a set dressed onto the Torre Yago building on Avenida de Filipinas, just off the Levante front. So do not turn up expecting a pint and a chat with John Hannah. What you can do is stand outside and recognise the frontage immediately, which for most people turns out to be enough.
7. Hotel Don Pancho
In the series: episode two.
What it actually is: a four-star adults-only hotel on the Avenida del Mediterráneo, a hundred metres or so from Torre Yago, so it pairs with number six without a detour. It has a small sideline as a location generally; the hotel keeps a list on its own site of the films and series shot around the town.
8. Benidorm Palace
In the series: episode two, with Dennis sitting on the steps at the entrance.
What it actually is: the cabaret theatre, the one with the stainless-steel frontage, and an institution here since 1977. This is the only stop on the trail that is properly out of the way, up behind the Rincón, so it is a taxi or a deliberate walk rather than something you pass. If you are going to go, go in the evening and see the show.
9. La Creu, on the Serra Gelada
In the series: the cross on the ridge, in the wider landscape shots.
What it actually is: the large cross standing on the Serra Gelada above Rincón de Loix, and the best free view on this coast. The path starts from the Mirador de la Creu at the top of Avenida de Tokio. It is a proper uphill walk rather than a stroll, so take water, wear something other than flip-flops, and do it early or at dusk rather than in the middle of an August afternoon.
The one that is not Benidorm at all
Before somebody spends a morning on it: episode three is not us. Parts of it were shot in Gran Canaria, around Playa del Inglés, and there is a church in it that you will not find here however long you walk. Television does this. The Levante and Poniente seafronts get used generally throughout, so if a shot looks familiar but is not on this list, it is probably just the promenade.
How to walk it in an afternoon
Seven of the nine sit in a rough line along the front, so the sensible order is west to east. Start at the Balcón del Mediterráneo and drop down to Mal Pas, because the Old Town is best before it gets busy. Cut inland to the town hall and the Primavera Park. Then walk the Levante promenade to Torre Yago and the Don Pancho, which takes about twenty-five minutes and is the nicest part of the walk anyway. Intempo you will have seen on your left the entire time.
That leaves the Palace and the cross, which are both away from the front and both better as their own trip. Do the cross on a morning and the Palace on an evening, and you have the full nine across a couple of days without hurrying any of it.
What have we missed?
This list is put together from the production’s own locations and the listings press, and it will not be complete. Half of you have walked past a camera crew at some point in late 2025 and thought nothing of it. If you have spotted somewhere in an episode that is not on here, or you know exactly which stretch of promenade a particular scene was shot on, tell us and we will add it with a credit.
Episodes go out on Channel 5 on Thursdays at 9pm, and the whole series so far is on catch-up.
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