Almost forty years after it happened, the Lockerbie bombings still cast a long shadow over the British national psyche. On December 21, 1988, a passenger jet bound for Washington DC exploded in mid-air above the small Scottish town of Lockerbie.
All 259 lives on board were lost, including 11 on the ground who were pulverised by the falling debris. It still remains the worst terrorist attack perpetuated on British soil, and a source of endless on-screen fascination.
Now, the story of the police investigation into the crash has been made into a drama. So here we are, watching passengers board the doomed jet before it takes off into the empty sky. Five minutes later, residents at Lockerbie are enjoying a pre-Christmas pint at the pub before the earth starts shaking, and the sky explodes with fire. Hats off to the BBC SFX team: it looks apocalyptic.
Unlike the Sky show Lockerbie, which aired in January this year, this isn’t so much the story of one victim’s family. Instead, it’s the story of how the police investigation into the crash unfolded in a pre-terrorism era, when putting bombs in plane luggage was distressingly easy.
Lockerbie, we are told, is the smallest police force in the country, and soon enough, Glasgow policeman Ed McCusker (a suitably dour Connor Swindells) has been drafted in, along with hundreds of his fellow officers, to comb an 850 square mile radius for debris including bodies, belongings and the reason the plane went down in the first place.
It’s not sexy police work. In fact, it’s frequently distressing. The camera pauses at one point on a single child’s shoe that is bagged as evidence. Later on, McCusker picks up his own children’s shoes when he gets home from work and lingers over it.
As the investigation progresses, egos start to come into play. Mistakes are made; a Palestinian-American victim’s family is harassed due to evidence that turns out to be faulty.
Meanwhile, in Scotland, DCS John Orr (Peter Mullan) repeatedly sniffs at attempts to take the investigation off his hands on “Scottish soil”, despite the fact that the tiny police force is clearly overwhelmed.
British bomb command get involved. The FBI get involved – Suits’ Patrick J Adams makes a welcome appearance as agent Dick Marquise, as does Severance’s Merritt Wever as Kathryn Turman, who ends up advocating for the victims being forced to travel to Scotland for news about their loved ones’ bodies. Perplexingly, given the actual Americans on board, Eddie Marsan is also called upon to adopt a treacly-thick Southern accent to play explosives expert Tom Thurman.
As this massive cast of characters rubs up against each other, their stories – and unfolding investigation – are intertwined with the lives of the victims and their families. We meet Steven Flannigan, who was orphaned by a chunk of debris that obliterated his entire family, and the parents of Tim Burman, who travel up to Scotland with his dental records in a harrowing attempt to identify their son’s body.
It’s all a bit much to handle sometimes, and the show does sag slightly under the weight of all that grief, as well as the sheer number of stories that demand to be told.
Some moments intended to be sincere – the kindly female volunteers of Lockerbie, for instance, who end up helping the police force process the victims’ personal belongings for release to their families – come across as overly saccharine.
But this is a powerful story, and the inclusion of old news clips from the era hammer home the point that this was a very real tragedy, that took hundreds of lives.
“If this was an attack against US citizens, it would be unprecedented,” Marquise says at one point. “The implications of this would chilling.” Chilling it is – a pebble in a pond whose ripples are still being felt today.
The Bombing of Pan Am 103 is on BBC iPlayer and BBC One from 9pm, Sunday 18 May
