‘That’s not Mexico,’ I exclaimed. The location at the start of BBC’s Nine Bodies in a Mexican Morgue was instantly identifiable. ‘That’s Abades on Tenerife.’
When I Googled it, AI disagreed, insisting only Gran Canaria appeared in the series, Jardín Canario de Viera y Clavijo to be exact. Not for the first time, nor the last, AI was wrong. The leper village that never was at Abades is unique. When you know it, you know it.
For years, Tenerife was virtually ignored as a movie/TV location, by the big players at least. Tour guides and guidebooks might have claimed Star Wars and Planet of the Apes were filmed on the island, but neither was true. Clash of the Titans proved the catalyst for change when various locations across the island were used when it was shot in 2009. It acted as a wake-up call for Hollywood, showing them what many of us knew – the diversity of terrain on Tenerife and the Canary Islands offered unique shooting locations.
Since then, the likes of Fast & Furious 6; Exodus; In the Heart of the Sea, Allied; Wonder Woman; Eternals; Jason Bourne; and Solo have all featured scenes from the islands. What’s interesting is how many use locations to stand in for other places. For Jason Bourne, Santa Cruz de Tenerife became Athens. As mentioned earlier, in Nine Bodies in a Mexican Morgue Tenerife and Gran Canaria stood in for Mexico.
What’s interesting is Tenerife or one of the other Canary Islands seems to be turning up on the screen every other week, usually pretending to be somewhere else. Since streaming exploded, many of these are high profile TV series.
Spotting the Canary Island location in various TV Series
Hostage (Netflix)
It’s become a game. Andy and I will be watching TV and one of us will exclaim, ‘That’s (insert name of Canary Island location here).’ The latest instance was while watching Hostage on Netflix. In it, the husband of Britain’s PM (played by) Suranne Jones is kidnapped while working with Doctors Without Borders in French Guiana. Except, when the kidnappers drove them through the lush, jungle-like terrain, I was distracted by the background. ‘That’s the Canaries,’ I grabbed the remote and paused the action. ‘Could be Garajonay on La Gomera, or Anaga.’ I was wrong, but not by far. It was Los Tilos on La Palma.
The Rings of Power (Amazon Prime)
This is an easy one anyone whose been on an excursion on Tenerife should be able to spot. At one point the Hobbits look over Teide National Park from the Roques de Garciá. Surprisingly, none of them mentioned having to battle the crowds to get a prime spot.
Frauds (ITV)
We haven’t watched this yet, only seen the trailer, but it was enough to show the background in many scenes wasn’t the Spanish mainland (where the story is set) but various locations around Tenerife (Southern coast; Santa Cruz; San Andrés; the pine forest).
The Night Manager 2 (BBC)
This one offers a true test of Tenerife knowledge as some scenes give only fleeting glimpses. One of them was enough to show the distinctive church in Tegueste standing in for a location in Colombia.
Jack Ryan, series 4 (Amazon Prime)
Tenerife, Gran Canaria, and La Palma double for Thailand, Mexico, Nigeria, and Myanmar. The Magma centre in Costa Adeje played the part of a casino in Myanmar. Tazacorte on La Palma stood in for Mexico. A hotel on Gran Canaria became a palace in Nigeria. There were also various haciendas featured, but those were really difficult to pin down.
Pluribus (Apple)
There is a distinctive look to traditional towns in the Canaries, even the more modern aspects of them. They don’t look quite like Spain, and they don’t look quite like somewhere in South or Central America. One of the most critically acclaimed TV series of 2025 was Pluribus. An early scene depicted a town in Morocco. It had that distinctive Canary Island look written all over it.
Later scenes in the series are meant to be the Darian Gap, a dense strip of rainforest between Colombia and Panama that is considered one of the most dangerous places in the world. Understandable then that the makers of the series chose instead to use Los Tilos on La Palma as the Gap. If you’ve visited, you’ll know its ‘lost world’ type looks make it a perfect stand-in.
Foundation (Apple TV)
Another one we haven’t watched, Foundation is a sci-fi epic whose shooting locations include Teide National Park, La Laguna, Santa Cruz, and Puerto de la Cruz on Tenerife; various César Manrique locations on Lanzarote; rock pools on La Gomera; and apparently around Tuineje on Fuerteventura. This one is on our ‘to watch list’ so we’ll be no doubt be distracted trying to spot those Canary Island shots when we get round to doing so.
And finally,
As a bonus, here’s a film to end with. Getting in the mood for the World Cup during the summer, we watched Saipan, an entertaining dramatisation of the massive, and newsworthy, fallout between Roy Keane and Mick McCarthy during the 2002 World Cup. Scenes showing Irish actor Éanna Hardwicke as Roy training in a subtropical Saipan landscape were quite clearly the Rambla de Castro while other shots were in the Hotel Botánico in Puerto de la Cruz. It’s an excellent film, by the way.
No doubt there will be more cases of the Canaries doubling for other locations before too long, some that even AI and the supposedly all-knowing internet won’t know about.
Keep your eyes peeled.
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