On October 21, 2022, Netflix will start showing the British true-crime documentary series High Confessions of an Ibiza Drug Mule. The BBC and Blast Entertainment are responsible for creating the show. Viewers worldwide can now view the four-part documentary, which premiered on BBC in 2021, thanks to the streaming service.
A woman named Michaella McCollum failed to smuggle $2.5 million in cocaine through Lima airport. In the show, a young man from Northern Ireland describes his experience as a drug mule for a criminal organisation. Tatiana Penfold, Sade Giliberti, and others act in some of the dramatic sequences.
Warning: This review contains spoilers for High Confessions of an Ibiza Drug Mule
Michaella McCollum and Melissa Reid, both from Northern Ireland, were apprehended at Peru’s Jorge Chavez International Airport in 2013 while attempting to smuggle $2.5 million in cocaine into Spain. The ‘Peru Two’ received a nearly seven-year sentence at the world’s most infamous prison.
The series follows Michaella, a former club hostess in Spain’s nightlife, recounting her descent into drug use and excess from when she first visits the nation on vacation.
At the beginning of the documentary, the protagonist explains the events that have occurred or are about to happen, much like in a romantic comedy or an episode of Lizzie McGuire. If Michaella had voiced it, I wouldn’t mind, but the other voice actor makes the prospect of going to jail seem overly adventurous and unrealistic.
We learn that McCollum was one of ten children born to Irish parents and that as she grew up, the country became a dangerous place full of gun occurrences and random flocks of sheep.
Thus, she has purchased a one-way ticket to Ibiza and is evading her problems at home. What was she trying to escape from? The topic remains unexplored. Therefore, we have no idea.
The plot then goes through the usual steps of a made-up movie, with the main character running away to a place she doesn’t know, getting drunk, partying all night, and making fast friends with other women in the same situation.
That is, until a tall, dark, and attractive man comes along and, under the guise of transporting you to heaven, dumps you into the ultimate torment you could never have imagined, even in your worst nightmares.
I don’t see how a young person could be so head over heels in love that they’d agree to be a drug mule. I could understand if someone was offered millions of dollars, but our little Bambi only earned 5,000 pounds for all that work.
Even in 2013, it wasn’t worth much, but what do you expect from someone who confuses Lima, Peru, with Spain?
In the end, I was merely another drug mule in Ibiza.
This documentary shows how drug cartels recruit and run their businesses.
I understand that Michaella McCollum was a teenager when she made her awful mistake, but am I obligated to admire her for how she overcame this?
It’s not like she didn’t have the intelligence to claim that she was kidnapped and made into the mule, but when things didn’t go her way, she took responsibility for her voluntary actions.
She was released from jail early, has the support of her family, and isn’t even being pursued by the cartel’s thugs, so she got off straightforwardly, in my perspective. The documentary failed to tell the whole story by not talking to Melissa Reid, who was with her then.
For the most part, the documentary is nothing more than a spectacular news piece with some sit-down interviews with people who know tidbits about what happened.
We never look in detail at Michaella’s personality, why she ran away from her family, or what she did after she exited prison. There’s a new Netflix original documentary called High Confessions of an Ibiza Drug Mule.
