A few days before Christmas in 1988, a Pan Am flight was torn apart by a bomb. All 243 passengers and 16 crew members died, along with 11 residents of the small Scottish town beneath.
Given modern TV drama’s fondness for flashbacks, I expected Lockerbie: A Search For Truth to open with these statistics as a sobering reminder of what’s to come. But director Otto Bathurst knows you know what happened in Lockerbie – or at least that it was the worst terrorist attack in UK history.
Instead, the six-parter’s opener focused on one man: Jim Swire (Colin Firth), whose 2021 book the drama is based on.
(Photo: SKY/Carnival/Graeme Hunter Pictures)It was a smart decision. While the drama did feature many of those clichéd prestige TV calling cards, from flash forwards to time and location jumps marked on screen, the opening episode was a masterclass in dread-building.
From the moment the words “December 1988” appeared on screen, a timer began in the viewer’s head. The only question was when the bomb would explode.
We watched the younger Jim at home with his family as they warmly waved daughter Flora (screen newcomer Rosanna Adams) off to spend Christmas with her boyfriend’s family for the first time. Yet as Jim pulled Flora into a hug with the words: “Go and have the time of your life.” The looming fear returned.
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Read MoreIt was present, too, as Flora boarded the show’s impressive, spacious reconstruction of Pan Am Flight 103. Aboard, the festive revelling of the passengers swelled into an overbearing cacophony, while the camera darted over every face asking the viewer to consider all as potential culprits.
When the bomb finally did go off, it was almost a relief, a breaking of the tension. A loud noise, then quiet.
The devastation wasn’t shown from the air, however, as the drama cut to Lockerbie, and hellfire began raining down. With the air thick with soot and the crackling sound of fire, the scene was ripped straight from an apocalypse movie.
Yet even in these dramatic moments tightly stuffed with impressive practical effects, Lockerbie: A Search For Truth honed in on the human element.
Seeing a small Scottish boy ask in a wobbly voice where his parents had gone was every bit as crushing as the scene where Jim received the call confirming that his daughter had been on board the flight. This moment showed Firth at his best, gripping the table in static fear as his wife Jane (Catherine McCormack) and their surviving children clung to each other and gutturally wailed.
Catherine McCormack as Jane Swire (Photo: SKY/Carnival/Graeme Hunter Pictures)As the episode continued, the action went in a different direction, with Jim encountering government ministers, support groups and shady local journalists (Sam Troughton) in his quest for answers.
As viewers of Lockerbie: The Search For Truth, we have an advantage on the characters. You don’t have to have been alive in 1988 to find out what happened to the victims and Jim himself with one quick Google; you can do it without leaving your sofa.
Bathurst knows this. By focusing on the real people impacted by this historic event, he makes that knowledge a curse that heightens the drama. This drama is all the more punishing and pain-inducing – and gripping and impactful – because you know what’s to come.
The question is not how it ends, but how we get there.
‘Lockerbie: A Search for Truth’ continues next Thursday at 9pm on Sky Atlantic
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