Cast: Connor Swindells, Patrick J. Adams, Eddie Marsan, Peter Mullan, Lauren Lyle, Phyllis Logan, Tony Curran, Merritt Wever, James Harkness, Amanda Drew, Molly Geddes, Nicholas Gleaves, Douglas Hodge, Alastair Mackenzie, Kevin McKidd, Dominik Tiefenthaler, Estrid Barton, Adrian Lukis, Joe Layton, Robert Jack, Andrew Rothney, Adam Rothenburg, Archie McCormick, Parker Sawyers, Etta Jackson, Majd Eid.
To live through history is to take stock of the emotions you feel as the moment reveals itself; to be able to reflect as television, the modern mediator of truth and fiction, uncovers those emotions once more as they harness the energy of the subject for either entertainment or for unearthing some even darker secret, is to understand the curse of our age, that everything presented on a disaster of unimaginable scale is up for debate.
Two very different objectives and observations have come to pass in the last few months relating to the senseless murder of the passengers aboard Pan Am Flight 103 and the sheer terror it brought to the people of Lockerbie who suffered incredible trauma and found a resilience in community that defied the world.
The first of these, Lockerbie: A Search For Truth was resolute in its opinion and conviction of the supposed miscarriage in sentencing and one man’s fight for justice, and the other, The Bombing of Pan Am 103 is a more understanding portrayal of the events that surrounded that dark and desperate night in December 1988 that shattered the Scottish town, ripping the heart out of its quiet and unassuming presence, and the call to leave no stone unturned in the fight to gather every forensic piece of evidence and prove a conspiracy that went to the heart of Libya’s government and beyond.
Both series have meaning and an investigation that is honourable for very different reasons, and to compare them would be almost an injustice in itself, however, The Bombing Of Pan Am 103 takes a wider lens approach, not just focusing on the relationship forged between two men, but the links and liaisons between inter-government agencies, between the countries affected, primarily the United States of America and Scotland, and the people caught in the tsunami of wreckage, physical and mental, that engulfed the news for weeks and years to come.
The sympathy of expression is paramount, the suffering of those who remained to count the cost is principal, and the lives of those involved, the likes of DS Ed McCusker, played by Connor Swindells, FBI Special Agent Dick Marquise, Tom Thurman, DCI Harry Bell, and the empathetic Kathryn Turman, as well as the locals of the town who had to deal with the unknown evil that visited them from the sky and then find the courage to shoulder the weight of the world’s media camping on their doorstep, is important to the reality of the event; the shock, the desperation, the grief are all there, in detail, the anger, the resentment, the investigation, all consuming and full of anguish…this is the right amount of truth shown on screen for the public to remember and digest.
The Bombing of Pan Am 103 is an important representativeof historical evidence, it is a reminder that the fight for justice continues and that the distress of the world forever moves on when evil is permitted to carry out its nefarious acts of cowardice.
Ian D. Hall