The Bombing of Pan Am 103

In The Bombing of Pan Am 103, the BBC’s six-part dramatisation of the 1988 Lockerbie disaster, a sombre reverence permeates each scene. It’s a series deeply aware of the weight of its subject, intent on honouring the victims and the small Scottish town left shattered in the aftermath.

At its most affecting, the drama remains close to Lockerbie itself. The townspeople’s quiet dignity provides a moving emotional core often missing from the more procedural elements. A standout sequence sees residents taking down their Christmas lights in silent mourning – an understated gesture of collective grief that lingers long after the credits roll.

Connor Swindells offers a subdued but resonant performance as DS Ed McCusker, the show’s emotional centre. His tentative, compassionate relationship with Stephen (Archie McCormack), a boy who loses nearly everything in the blast, is one of the series’s most human threads. Their scenes – fragile, tentative and generous – offer a rare glimpse of hope in a story saturated with loss. In contrast to the bombast of the political and investigative narrative, these moments breathe.

Where the series falters is in its handling of the broader international response. Patrick J Adams, as FBI Special Agent Dick Marquise, brings a swagger familiar from Suits, and while that may serve a narrative function underscoring American assertiveness it often teeters on caricature. The cultural clash between US operatives and Scottish officials is played with a heavy hand, risking a kind of reverse chauvinism. That the town’s tiny police force would need assistance in investigating an unprecedented act of terror is hardly a slight, yet the show sometimes frames this as a moral affront.

In its eagerness to highlight the overreach of external agencies, it occasionally reduces complex actors to simplistic roles. It’s a pity, because the series is at its most powerful when it takes a more intimate, ground-level view.

As a period piece, it captures the slow, analogue churn of the late 80s with care. News arrives late, rumours travel faster than truth, and footage is impossible to come by. Families wait in agony, and in one subplot, the family of a wrongly implicated man has their lives upended by suspicion. It’s in these quieter, more reflective beats – where grief unfolds in real time – that The Bombing of Pan Am 103 finds itself.

Christina Yang

The Bombing of Pan Am 103 is released on BBC iPlayer on 18^th May 2025.

Watch the trailer for The Bombing of Pan Am 103 here: