High: Confessions of an Ibiza Drug Mule on BBC1 is a tale of redemption
A new documentary about the Peru Two caught smuggling cocaine out of the country has plenty of twists
A simple choice of hairstyle made 19-year-old Michaella McCollum instantly notorious and more of a focus for anger and ridicule than her hapless co-conspirator and fellow drug trafficker Melissa Reid — together known as the “Peru Two”. The latter managed a neat French braid when appearing in court in Lima in 2013; still a remarkable feat of self-care under the circumstances. But her friend repeatedly opted in public for a bizarrely oversized bun. Did it signify defiance, vanity, cluelessness in the face of the world’s media?
It was a shortlived style that McCollum probably did as much as anyone to render naff. She even alludes to it herself in the snarky intro to each of the five episodes of High. “That’s me . . . owner of the world’s most infamous up-do.” As well as being the Ibiza party girl caught trying to smuggle 11 kilos of cocaine back to Spain in her luggage, masquerading as oatmeal. Because everyone buys porridge as a souvenir.
The opening minutes are unappealing, with the flip voiceover talking about her “one bad decision”. The small Northern Ireland town she grew up in is merrily characterised as “shooting and sheep — pure shite, right?”, causing her to book a one-way ticket to Ibiza. “You can guess the next bit,” she goes on. But settle in: this is rather more than a glib mea culpa. It develops into a tale of redemption with twists and ironies along the way, albeit one with the careful repeated caveat on screen that “only some of the facts could be verified”.
McCollum was not perhaps an ideal choice of drug mule. The naivety that meant she only realised Lima was not in Spain when she took a look at the moving map on the plane could be seen as a plus. But set against that was a volatility and lack of acting ability that was bound to attract attention on the ground.
The series is a combination of dramatised passages (Alexandra Constantinidi ably tracing the arc from scantily clad clubber to imprisoned felon weeping mascara tears) and interview testimonies from McCollum and others. We hear from prosecutors in Peru’s high court, British and Irish journalists, Ibiza friends, a fellow prisoner and the Spanish interpreter who eventually became a close ally.
Prosecutors were demanding information from the girls about their fixers back in Spain, in return for shorter sentences. One of the most grimly entertaining speakers is the matter-of-fact lawyer Alexandro Tirelli, a close observer of cartel business. “People who talk very fastly, they die very fastly also,” he coolly remarks. Today a freed McCollum is blonde and the bun is long gone. She never does explain what that was all about.