It’s interesting that even though the bombing of Pan Am 103 over Lockerbie, Scotland happened almost 38 years ago, two limited scripted series have been produced about the attack in the past two years. The first one, Peacock‘s Lockerbie: A Search for Truth, concentrated on one of the victims’ parents and how he tried to prod the investigation along. On the other hand, Netflix‘s The Bombing Of Pan Am 103 concentrates more on the investigation itself.
Opening Shot: A busy airport terminal gate around Christmastime. The setting is Heathrow Airport in London.
The Gist: It’s December 21, 1988. Pan Am 103 to Kennedy Airport in New York is delayed, and you see the various passengers dealing with the wait. In Glasgow, DS Ed McCusker (Connor Swindells) of the Scottish police’s Criminal Investigation Department is spending time with his family before going into work for a night shift.
The plane finally boards. In the village of Lockerbie, Scotland, Steven Flannigan (Archie McCormick) takes an bike to a neighbor’s house to get it checked out so he can give it to his sister for Christmas. Suddenly, an earth-shaking explosion happens. People in the village run outside to see fire literally raining down on them, pieces of an exploded airliner — including luggage and bodies — are falling to the ground. Steven’s neighborhood is hit the hardest and goes up in flames.
McCusker is called to the scene and he sees the debris as he drives up to the neighborhood that’s on fire. It’s pretty apparent that there were no survivors, though McCusker does encounter Steven still alive; his family’s house was destroyed. DCS John Orr (Peter Mullan) from CID arrives at the scene. As he commands the local patrol officers to preserve evidence, he wants McCusker to go to a farm outside of town where a body was found.
In both New York and London, families of the passengers of PA103 are momentarily kept in the dark. In Washington, though, the FBI already has the information about the crash. It’s relevant to U.S. law enforcement because over 200 of the passengers were Americans. Special Agent Dick Marquise (Patrick J. Adams) wants to send the bureau’s explosives specialist, Tom Thurman (Eddie Marsan) to Scotland, but his boss, Neil Gallagher (Adam Rothenberg), doesn’t want to arouse panic. However Marquise convinces him that this is needed and Thurman leaves immediately.
Even before Thurman shows up, it’s apparent that something blew PA103 out of the sky, given the massive debris field. There seem to be some jurisdiction skirmishes between Scottish police and PM Margaret Thatcher’s investigators, but Orr maintains a strong hand as the lead investigator.
What Shows Will It Remind You Of? The Bombing Of Pan Am 103, created by Jonathan Lee, is the second series in the past 18 months to take on the 1988 terrorist attack. Peacock had the series Lockerbie: A Search For Truth, starring Colin Firth as the father of one of the victims.
Our Take: The Bombing Of Pan Am 103 takes a straightforward approach to dramatizing the bombing, its aftermath, and the investigation, which eventually led to the 1991 conclusion that the perpetrators were two Libyan intelligence officers, whom were finally handed over by Muammar Gaddafi in 1999. A disclaimer before the series starts states that the story was based on research and interviews with investigators, victims’ families, and people from Lockerbie that experienced the explosion, so there is plenty of fodder to make a compelling limited series out of.
We thought that the first episode might be a grim slog like we’ve seen in other recent true-disaster dramas. But the characters that Lee and company have culled from their research and interviews are well-drawn and well-played by the cast. We were even drawn in by Marsan’s Texas drawl as Tom Thurman, even though we know Marsan is a Brit.
It doesn’t feel like Lee and his writers are at all trying to sensationalize the investigation. Heck, he doesn’t even play on viewers’ emotions when it comes to the bombing of the flight. We see the passengers walk through the jet bridge to get on the flight, then the next time we encounter PA103 is when fiery debris is raining down on Lockerbie. What Lee is trying to emphasize with this is that while the investigation had its ups and downs — especially concerning the cooperation of the FBI with Scottish law enforcement — the scope and scale of what they had to deal with was unprecedented.
Performance Worth Watching: Peter Mullan’s John Orr is the heart and soul of this story. He makes sure he’s in charge, and also makes sure to tell everyone helping in the investigation to treat everything as evidence, and treat bodies with the respect they deserve.
Sex And Skin: None.
Parting Shot: At a vigil for the victims, Orr says, “This was an act of war. Now we have to find out who we’re fighting.”
Sleeper Star: We have yet to see Merritt Wever, who plays Kathryn Turman; Turman was in the FBI’s Victim Services Division, helping the families of the victims as the investigation plowed forward.
Most Pilot-y Line: None we could find. This is not the kind of show where grandiose lines of dialogue are necessary, and exposition isn’t as crucial as it would be during a show not based on a terrorist attack that was covered by media around the world 38 years ago.
Our Call: STREAM IT. The Bombing Of Pan Am 103 isn’t out to assess blame around why the investigation took so long or why it took even longer to bring anyone to justice over the largest terrorist attack on Scottish soil. But it’s not boring, either, which is a credit to the cast and to Lee’s insistence of giving the investigators lives outside of their jobs.
Joel Keller (@joelkeller) writes about food, entertainment, parenting and tech, but he doesn’t kid himself: he’s a TV junkie. His writing has appeared in the New York Times, Slate, Salon, RollingStone.com, VanityFair.com, Fast Company and elsewhere.