Tragedy isn’t the best source of drama if it’s based in fact, and especially if it's significant in scale. The best disaster films are those that draw something fictitious out of history, such as James Cameron’s Titanic, or isolate one inspirational story amidst a catastrophic event, with J. A. Bayona’s Indian Ocean tsunami drama The Impossible a strong recent example.
The terrorist attack that caused an explosion on the Pan Am Flight 103 from Frankfurt to Detroit galvanized the British public into action in a way not seen by any world event since World War II, but there’s been little desire to revisit events that were fundamentally unresolved (Abdelbaset al-Megrahi, the only terrorist convicted, died of prostate cancer in 2012). Even if this can be credited to British prudence in regards to the expression of grief, it’s not like American entertainment has found a reasonable way to respond to similar disasters; every American film to even remotely allude to Columbine has attracted heavy detraction (this year’s The Drama the most recent example), and there’s been zero interest in 9/11 docudramas like World Trade Center and United 93.
The Bombing of Pan Am 103 is one of two shows released within the last year that tackled the same subject. Sky Atlantic’s Lockerbie: A Search for Truth offered a frustratingly futile attempt to get to the root of the bombing’s cause, which has remained a subject of debate since 1988. The issue with the five-part drama was that its speculation provided no new insights, and the show wasn’t any more popular when it debuted on Peacock in the United States because of Americans’ general unawareness with the case itself.
The Bombing of Pan Am 103 carried more weight as an "official" deconstruction of the tragedy because it was produced by BBC One, a free-to-air public broadcast channel that’s generally avoided anything objectionable. Rather than isolating a single family in the way that Lockerbie: A Search for Truth did, The Bombing of Pan Am 103 is an all-encompassing view of the international agencies involved in the joint investigation. The flight itself killed 190 Americans and 43 British citizens, but it occurred over Lockerbie, Scotland, and reigned devastation down on the small community. Shared interest in justice didn’t make the inquisition any easier because of the FBI’s reluctance to share information, the backlash from the increasingly agitated families of the victims, and the tenuous political dynamic with Libya, which was commonly accepted as the culprit.
The Bombing of Pan Am 103 does a few things right. The tragedy is encapsulated through the gradual dissemination of news, since it occurred at a moment where official television broadcasts were the fastest routes of communication. It’s also well-aware that the irrationality inspired by outrage isn’t entirely malicious, and that none of the departments involved were necessarily interested in claiming to have “solved” the case because the U.K. was trepidatious about interference in any international conflicts. The biggest dispute is between the victims’ organization, which advocated for clearer communication about investigation updates, and the joint intelligence operation that saw no reason for potential security breaches. Even then, the series has an easy way out because the American FBI agents are seen as the most withholding and inconsiderate, whereas the British police acted as emphatically and intelligently as anyone could ask for during perilous circumstances.
If airport security and espionage agencies were to be judged, the events of 1988 were a complete meltdown of incompetence, in which several warning signs were ignored. Yet, the rallying of the mainland behind the survivors was unquestionably a triumph of the human spirit that resulted in rational legal amendments and an embodiment of British compassion. The authentic depiction of the attack’s barbarity is grounded enough for any notes of optimism to be well-earned, but The Bombing of Pan Am 103 does show apprehension in anything that could incentivize polarization. The initial suspicion of the Palestinian militant Abu Nidal Organization, prompted by a warning of extremist action by the Palestine Liberation Organization, is brushed over with only the minimal acknowledgement of either legitimate cause or presumed Islamophobia by authorities. The tone of the series could be described as “just the fact, ma’am.”
The infrastructural complexity shown in The Bombing of Pan Am 103 provided an opportunity to emphasize an ensemble with few stars, a decision that complemented its realism. The Bombing of Pan Am 103 has a cast that’s representative of the civilians intertwined in the case. The biggest names in the ensemble are veteran character actor Peter Mullan as the Scottish police constable John Orr, who handled the immediate crisis as Senior Investigating Officer in Lockerbie, and Meritt Weaver as Kathryn Turman, the Dallas-born assistant director of the FBI's Victim Services Division. Mullan’s a reliable stand-in for working-class Scottish chivalry, and The Bombing of Pan Am 103 is his second great performance this year after his supporting role in I Swear. Weaver’s a chameleonic performer whose transformation into one of the few sympathetic Americans in the show is impressive; why her brilliance on television hasn’t translated to equally compelling film roles is anyone’s guess.
The Bombing of Pan Am 103 is a comprehensive history lesson. The closest comparison I could make with any modern American show would be Alex Gibney’s The Looming Tower, the miniseries that tackled how the competition between the FBI and CIA caused intelligence gaps that inadvertently resulted in 9/11.