There have been several documentaries about the 1988 Lockerbie bombing, most of them very good: sober, un-sensationalist but deeply moving. It remains the deadliest terrorist attack in UK history. A bomb exploded on Pan Am flight 103 as it flew over the small Scottish town. All 243 passengers and 16 crew were killed. Eleven people were killed on the ground by the debris that suddenly fell out of the night sky.
Lockerbie: A Search for Truth dramatises the story of one bereaved father’s efforts to uncover what actually happened – how the bomb got on board the flight, who put it there, which organisation was behind it, and why the UK government seemed to be obstructing his pursuit at every turn. Jim Swire (here played by Colin Firth) was a GP living with his wife, Jane, and their children in Bromsgrove, Worcestershire, when the flight exploded with his about-to-be-24-year-old daughter Flora onboard. The drama is based on the book Swire co-wrote with Peter Biddulph, The Lockerbie Bombing: A Father’s Search for Justice, which is the distillation of the years of investigation and involvement he had with the case, including the eventual trial of two Libyan suspects and Swire’s work thereafter to convince the courts and the public that the one convicted man, Abdelbaset al-Megrahi (played by Ardalan Esmaili), was innocent of the crime.
It is an extraordinary story of one ordinary man’s dedication to a cause. Unfortunately, extraordinary stories – especially when they centre primarily round dogged detective work and the unravelling of miles of bureaucratic red tape – do not automatically make good dramas. The five-part miniseries seems in thrall to the book and is suffocated by detail. Every step, and misstep, of Swire’s journey is recorded, to inescapably deadening effect. He is played by Colin Firth, who doesn’t bring much colour to what has already been rendered a grey part.
Under the weight of the detail there lurk only the traditional emotional beats of such a drama. It opens (more or less) with a set piece of the terrible night of 21 December 1988 in Lockerbie itself, which only just manages to swerve unflattering comparisons with a Casualty special. Journalist Murray Guthrie (Sam Troughton) will go on to join forces with Swire as their suspicions grow that they are not being told the truth. At first, he wanders in traditional horrified fashion around the burning town, picking out awful details for the viewer and noticing that self-identified “crash investigators” arrived on the scene very early, cutting open luggage and disappearing before first light.
There is the family’s wait for Flora’s death to be confirmed, amid the chaos and seeming incompetence by those whose job it is to manage a crisis. There is the identification of Flora’s body in the cavernous local ice rink that has been converted into a morgue. And then there is the increasingly neglected wife (Catherine McCormack, bringing much life to this underserved part of the story) and remaining children, who must deal with their grief alone as Swire sublimates his into uncovering the truth first for himself and Flora and then for Megrahi.
In the course of his years as a spokesperson for the Pan Am families and lobbyist of various governments – first for an independent inquiry into the bombing, then for the trial of suspects and release of Megrahi – Swire does amazing things. He takes a fake bomb through the apposite airports to prove that nothing has changed as a result of the tragedy. He visits Colonel Gaddafi in Libya, and Megrahi many times in prison. But these events all feel curiously inert, perhaps because every other action is given equal weight and screen time. Similarly, the trial feels like it plays out almost in real time and so the power of the few pivotal moments that reveal apparent cover-ups is almost lost.
Lockerbie: A Search for Truth is the first of two fictionalised accounts of the subject. The next, coming soon, is a six-part drama from the BBC starring Connor Swindells, Peter Mullan and Merritt Wever, focusing on the US and Scottish investigations and the effects of the tragedy on the town and families who lost loved ones. It will be an interesting and maybe instructive pairing. In the meantime, this initial offering is full of good performances and good intentions but remains affectless. An intriguing puzzle only to anyone too young to remember the event – or at least the headlines and the shock of the country – for themselves.