The incident was such a nightmare that years later, even after other films and series have been made on it, a six-part miniseries, The Bombing of Pan Am 103, hits Netflix.
On December 21, 1988, just before Christmas, Pan Am Flight 103 was destroyed by a terrorist bomb and crashed over the quiet Scottish town of Lockerbie. All 259 passengers and crew aboard were killed, alongside 11 local residents on the ground, making it the deadliest act of terrorism on British soil till then. What creator Jonathan Lee and director Michael Keillor have done, is stayed away from the shock value and focussed on the cost to human life.
The bodies, belongings and debris were scattered over 850 square miles, still the local cops and residents who came out in full force to help, searched, bagged, labelled every little piece they found, not knowing what would turn out to be crucial evidence. The locals, not just looked after their own, but did a thankless task of cleaning and packing the belongings of the victims, so that the families would get something of value to them. The series takes a ground-level perspective—on the one hand the Scottish, American and international law enforcement and intelligence teams following the slimmest leads to apprehend the perpetrators; on the other the grieving families on both sides of the Atlantic hoping for justice.
The series may be a bit dull in parts, but is also meticulously detailed and respectful towards the shattered families. The tension of the hunt is somewhat diffused by the fact that many viewers already know how the case turned out, but it is still interesting to watch how, over a decade, dedicated personnel worked on the case and eventually brought the criminals to the courts. Justice may not have been adequately served from the point of view of the victims’ families, but there is also the fact that but for a few courageous people who risked their lives to testify, the terrorists could easily have walked scottfree.
The Bombing of Pan Am 103 mainly follows the immense joint effort between Scottish authorities and American federal agencies. The narrative centers on the friction and eventual partnership between local law enforcement—led by the small but determined Dumfries and Galloway Constabulary—and the formidable resources of the FBI and CIA.  Peter Mullan delivers an excellent performance as DCS John Orr, the relentless Scottish officer ensuring that his small force isn’t pushed aside by outsiders. Alongside him, Connor Swindells plays DS Ed McCusker, in a restrained, empathetic portrayal of a local detective tasked with navigating crime scenes of unimaginable horror, and still finding the time to help a young boy orphaned by the falling aircraft, to cope with his bereavement.
On the American side, Patrick J. Adams stars as FBI Special Agent Dick Marquise, bringing a crisp, no-nonsense personality to the man who tries to understand the methods of the Scottish police, while dealing with the get-results-anyhow approach of his own compatriots. If the forensics experts do the tedious work of required to trace the bomb’s origin to Libya, an American woman (Merritt Wever) demands that her government accord the same level of care toward the victims’ families that the Scottish people have demonstrated—whether it is by staying with bodies till they were taken away,  or hosting American families who wish to visit the site of the crash.
Director Michael Keillor handles the sheer logistics of the disaster and its aftermath with remarkable detailing. The early sequences depicting the crash and its immediate aftermath are brutal and vivid, but also sober. There is no need for sensationalism when a child’s shoe can convey the pathos much more powerfully than dismembered body parts.
All of it leads to the 2001 trial, that is quickly dispensed with, to give the sense of a story’s end, but there was political and social fallout. Subsequently, there have been other terrorist attacks all over the world, but The Bombing of Pan Am 103 serves as a reminder that evil may have its limits, but humanity is boundless.
The Bombing of Pan Am 103
Creator: Johnathan Lee
Cast: Connor Swindells, Patrick J. Adams and Merritt Wever and others
On Netflix