Lockerbie: A Search For Truth opens in May 2002 as Dr Jim Swire (Colin Firth) is going to see a particular individual person in prison, before flashing back to December 21st 1988, the fateful day when Pan Am Flight 103 was brought down by Libyan terrorists, although Jim and his family had no idea who initially dealt the blow.
The explosion comes approximately 8 minutes into the programme, followed by the plane raining down in large chunks, everything’s on fire, and Jim can’t get through to the emergency line, since every man and his wife is trying to get through, but there wasn’t to be consolation for anyone, as 259 people klled on the plane, plus 11 on the ground where it fell.
At the time, unless you knew someone directly involved, you couldn’t get a sense of the scale, but here we can learn who knew what, when and how? Swire is determined to get to the truth, and becomes the spokesman for all the survivning families. Plus, I didn’t know that at the time, soon after what happened, Jim Swire even took a homemade bomb onto a plane going to the USA, albeit a safe version.
There’s also the Gadaffi connection, where Jim gets invited to meet the dictator, yet his son tries to dissuade him by mentioning how Terry Waite was locked in a basement for 4 years after attempting something similar.
In a drama which includes some real footage from the ground where the plane came to rest, Lockerbie: A Search For Truth is heart-wrenching stuff and Firth puts in a solid performance, but so far after two episodes, once it gets past the shock of the initial plane crash, it plays a very straight bat and isn’t quite as gripping as it gets into the politics of what happened. However, I will certainly check out the remaining three episodes.
Thanks to our friends at Sky for the screener prior to release.
Lockerbie: A Search For Truth is on Sky from tomorrow.
It’s not yet available to pre-order on Blu-ray or DVD, but when it is, it will be listed on the New DVD, Blu-ray, 3D and 4K releases UK page.
Series Directors: Jim Loach, Otto Bathurst
Producers: Colin Wratten, Brian Kaczynski
Writers: Maryam Hamidi, David Harrower, Jim Sheridan, Kirsten Sheridan, Naomi Sheridan
Cast:
Jim Swire: Colin Firth
Jane Swire: Catherine McCormack
Murray Guthrie: Sam Troughton
Cathy Swire: Jemma Carlton
Ellen Walker: Claire Brown
William Swire: Harry Redding
Alistair Campbell: Robert Cavanah
Shona Randall: Hiftu Quasem
John Bedford: Anton Valensi
Tony Gauci: Frank Crudele
Khaled Megrahi: Ghazi Al
Nabil: Youssef Kerkour
Ghada Megrahi: Tara Abboud
Barlinnie Guard: Matt McClure
Robert Black: John Wark
Malcolm Redmond: John Sackville
Flora Swire: Rosanna Adams
Rainer Gobel: Brian Caspe
Pierre Salinger: Bryan Bounds
Reviewer of movies, videogames and music since 1994. Aortic valve operation survivor from the same year. Running DVDfever.co.uk since 2000. Nobel Peace Prize winner 2021.