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Many of the Brits abroad tropes appear in the first big-screen version of the bawdy and beloved sitcom in 2011 (which was successful enough to get a similarly smutty Australia-set sequel in 2014). Culture clashes, language confusion, holiday romances, all are present and correct as Will and the gang attempt to have one final teenage fling in Malia, Crete before the realities of the adult world catch up with them.

And, as a film version of a TV comedy using a trip abroad as a plot device – something Ellen notes writers often resort to when slightly running out of ideas – it follows in the not-so-glorious, flipflopped footsteps of Holiday on the Buses, Are You Being Served?, Ab Fab, Steptoe and Son and Kevin and Perry Go Large. But, as Mark and Ellen soon discover on their holiday movie odyssey, other films use a change of location to explore far deeper ideas than just sex and sangria on neon-soaked streets.

2. A Room With a View

Going back to a more refined era, the sumptuous 1985 Merchant-Ivory version of EM Forster's novel describes a slightly different version of the Victorian Grand Tour. It's 1907, and Helena Bonham Carter's Lucy Honeychurch is a young woman who travels to Florence to add a passionate dimension to her repressed, upper-class life.

As film historian Professor Steve Chibnall tells Mark: "Lucy is on a voyage of discovery which involves an unbuttoning of buttoned-up British sensibility." The film illustrates how Brits feel able to shed their 'Britishness', and their class pretentions, in foreign climes, in Lucy's case finding romance with Julian Sands' dashing George.

3. The Lady Vanishes

Alfred Hitchcock's glorious murder-mystery is set mainly on a train travelling through continental Europe and populated by Brits. It's the perfect example of British attitudes to 'foreignness' at the time, with a general suspicion of continental behaviour and cuisine. But it reflected the troubled times that Europe faced.

Made in 1938, with a World War looming, having its spies, secret messages and intrigue defeated by sheer British pluck was soothing to cinema audiences fretting at home about the state of the world. As Ellen states: "Ultimately it's a celebration of Britishness, our derring-do and our stiff upper lip." In this example, not losing your Britishness abroad and not succumbing to the temptations of the continent were shown to be advantageous.

Cliff Richard getting onboard his iconic red bus in Summer Holiday.

4. Summer Holiday

As Brits began to exchange a fortnight in Bognor for a tantalising package holiday on the continent, this Swinging Sixties Cliff Richard vehicle (literally) expressed all of the optimism and wonder connected to foreign travel. Early scenes in dreary England are in black and white which transforms into magnificent technicolour as Cliff and his pals head to Greece on a double decker London bus.

"Independence runs right through it," says Steve Chibnall. "It's young people trying to get away." But, as the characters soon discover, the bus acts as a sanctuary, a mobile symbol of Englishness that protects them from the occasionally inhospitable actions of various Europeans and their distinctly unBritish behaviour.

5. Carry On Abroad

"Brits are embarrassed abroad, but we find embarrassment funny," continues Steve. And this acute embarrassment is typified perfectly by this 1972 Carry On entry. As Steve states, "You don't really need to see it," as it’s got everything you'd expect from the Carry On regulars Sid James, Barbara Windsor, Kenneth Williams and Charles Hawtrey being dropped into an unspecified foreign country on a cheap package holiday. Half-built hotels, unpalatable food, unpredictable weather, it has everything wrapped up in a cheap and cheerful, innuendo-laden package.

Once they've acclimatised to the location (and with some local hooch inside them) these Brits lose their inhibitions, but unlike the perpetually scandalized Edwardians of Room With a View, they use the distance from home as an excuse to act with abandon.

6. Shirley Valentine

Another person yearning to shed their Britishness is the titular character in Willy Russell's beloved 1989 film. As Steve Chibnall explains: "It's a comedy, but it's also got a serious core about the condition of women in the 1980s."

Shirley is a bored, working-class Liverpudlian housewife who dreams of a better life. She it finds in Greece, where she's reviled by the attitudes of other British holidaymakers and dives into a new exciting culture and identity, allowing herself to be seduced by the landscape and a local tavern owner (played by Tom Conti with a taramasalata-thick Greek accent).

As Mark states: "It's transformative. She is no longer the Shirley Valentine that everybody thought, she's the Shirley Valentine that she can imagine." And, as Ellen says, Shirley was talking directly to the camera long before Fleabag.

7. Morvern Callar

Lynne Ramsay's haunting, celebrated 2002 film deals with grief, identity and escape. A young woman discovers her boyfriend has killed himself. But rather than reporting it, she flees to Ibiza with her friend and pretends to be the author of the unpublished novel he wrote. Morvern isn't running away from her Britishness, but running away from the realities of life. She can become a new person once she's in a new location.

Samantha Morton, who played Morvern, identified intensely with the role. "There was a wavelength I was able to connect to very, very quickly," she tells Ellen. It's a film that means a huge amount to her, not least as it cemented a friendship with Lynne Ramsay: "To celebrate the genius that is Lynne is important to me."

Samantha Morton also points out the link between Morvern Callar and Charlotte Wells' acclaimed 2022 film Aftersun, which also features Brits abroad.

"Aftersun is loved and rightly so," she says. But she also points out the often overlooked debt it owes to Movern Callar (something that Mark also did in his review), especially in the atmosphere of the two films. While Movern runs away from the realities from home, the characters in Aftersun are forced to face the truth about who they are and what they mean to each other.

8. How to Have Sex

Another coming-of-age story set, this time set on a clubbing holiday in Malia (the same location as The Inbetweeners Movie), Molly Manning Walker's acclaimed film, which won the 2023 Un Certain Regard prize at Cannes, follows a group of teenage girls on holiday. The drinking, clubbing and hooking-up culture, lampooned in The Inbetweeners, is more forensically examined and the troubling aspects of these sort of experiences is explored.

"There's this pressure of sex that comes from every angle," the director tells Ellen. In this version of the story, the Brits escaping their ordinary lives feel compelled to act in a reckless way and find themselves in situations that leave them vulnerable to harm or sexual assault. "It holds up a mirror to people and how they perceive the world," Molly explains, "and I'm glad it's bringing up the topic [of sexual assault]."

As Ellen states, she sees How To Have Sex and Morvern Callar as the sort of daughters of Shirley Valentine, as women escape Britain to find out who they really are.

To hear more of Mark and Ellen's thoughts on the films that have portrayed Brits holidaying abroad, listen to the episode of Screenshot in full.