In the late 1980s, World in Action, Granada’s flagship current affairs show, faced a problem. Producer Ian McBride and investigative journalist Chris Mullin had made several documentaries suggesting a miscarriage of justice in the case of six Northern Irish men jailed in 1975 after being convicted for IRA-claimed bombings of two Birmingham pubs the previous year.

But, despite compelling evidence, the press and public were not responding enough to trouble the justice system. Influenced by the ratings and impact of another of Granada’s high-class departments – Drama, which had made Brideshead Revisited and The Jewel in the Crown – McBride commissioned playwright Rob Ritchie to dramatise World in Action’s investigation with a starry cast: Martin Shaw as McBride and John Hurt as Mullin.

The resulting drama, Who Bombed Birmingham?, aired on 28 March 1990 in a two-hour ITV network slot after Coronation Street at 8pm and opposite Dallas on BBC One. An appeal was soon granted by the court and, less than a year after transmission, in March 1991, the convictions were quashed and the six walked free.

As explained in Derek Paget’s still relevant book No Other Way to Tell It: Dramadoc/Docudrama on Television (Manchester University Press, 1998), there had already been fact-based fiction: big BBC Sunday night bio-dramas such as Churchill and the Generals. But at the time McBride took his gamble, the genre was in disrepute following a row over the way the BBC publicised The Monocled Mutineer (1986), Alan Bleasdale’s story of a First World War deserter as “a true story”, even though it fiddled with history.

Arguments about accuracy have never gone away, and the pre-credits disclaimer that “some scenes and characters having been invented for dramatic purposes” has become standardised. But ever since Who Bombed Birmingham? proved that this type of storytelling could bring justice and unlock cell doors, the docudrama has been hot property.

A list of Bafta contenders in the appropriate categories since 2007 shows the progressive dominance of the form. The list, with asterisks whose purpose will become clear, includes: See No Evil: The Moors Murders*, House of Saddam, The Sinking of the Laconia, Appropriate Adult*, Mrs Biggs*, The Great Train Robbery, The Lost Honour of Christopher Jefferies, Three Girls, The Moorside*, A Confession*, Chernobyl, The Sixth Commandment and, just last month, Mr Bates vs the Post Office.

That list includes many of the headline murders, tragedies, scandals and miscarriages of justice of recent times, and many others were broadcast without winning awards. The shows with asterisks were the work for ITV or the BBC of Jeff Pope, the pontiff of docudrama, whose Suspect: The Shooting of Jean Charles de Menezes – about the Brazilian falsely identified as a terrorist and killed by London police – dropped on Disney+ in April, showing that a form long associated with UK networks also has streamer appeal.

In Paget’s book, Sita Williams, a producer on many early Granada factions, poses five questions of suitability that still stand as a checklist: “1. Is it a viable [journalistic] story? 2. Can it be created from the available material? 3. Is there documentary?/ Is there drama? 4. Will simplifying produce a legal problem? 5. Will the amount of information produce a problem for the audience?” Pope has answered those questions correctly more often than anyone in the genre. Interviewing him recently for Radio Times about Suspect, I mentioned that, in common with most of his work, the De Menezes story had been widely covered by other media and inquiries or trials (in this case, for two decades) but, when dramatised, received the greatest public attention since the events. Pope essentially agreed with the theory of the World in Action team 35 years ago: “It’s the emotional journey drama can take you on.”

Employing fiction makes us think what it must have been like for the characters or wonder what their situation might be like for us.

Suspect, impeccable as journalism and drama, is further evidence of Pope’s infallibility in the field. But Who Bombed Birmingham? freed its subjects, while Suspect – though forensically establishing what mistakes were made by whom and bringing a form of justice to the innocent dead man’s family through greater public understanding – is unlikely to bring legal redress. The main takeaway may be dismay at how former Metropolitan Police Commissioners Lord Ian Blair and Dame Cressida Dick ended up with handsome titles and pensions.

The theory that docudrama is a surer route to truth than documentary has also been challenged in a different way this year. The first half of 2025 has seen two major factual fictions about the December 1988 massacre in which a bomb placed in the hold of an American transatlantic jumbo jet exploded over Scotland, killing all 243 passengers, 16 crew and 11 people on the ground (see our Lockerbie feature here).

January’s Sky Atlantic five-parter, Lockerbie: A Search for Truth, was followed by a six-parter, The Bombing of Pan Am 103, which premiered last month in the UK on BBC One and iPlayer ahead of a later global drop on co-producer Netflix – an increasing common funding and distribution arrangement as British networks react to streamer power.

This coincidence doubtless felt unfortunate to the producers of both shows. But any viewer fearing that watching a second would mean more of the same is wrong. The dramas tell completely different stories. The Bombing of Pan Am 103 draws heavily on a book by FBI field agent Richard Marquise, the first American investigator to reach Scotland, and supports the bureau’s conclusion that the bomb was made in Zurich for Libya and placed on the plane at Frankfurt. One Libyan was convicted by Scottish judges, another is due to go on trial in Washington DC soon, and a former Libyan government admitted responsibility.

‘It’s [all about] the emotional journey drama can take you on’

In a contrary narrative, the major source for Lockerbie: A Search for Truth is a book by Jim Swire, whose daughter, Flora, was killed in the tragedy. Swire believes the bomb was loaded at Heathrow in a plot by Iran and a Palestinian terrorist group based in Syria; he and his supporters suggest the Libyans were framed because western governments needed the support of Syria in military operations against Iraq. So in this case, the newer meaning of “faction” (fact-based drama) also illustrates the older definition: in both senses, there are two factions on Lockerbie.

This situation is not unique – multiple dramas about the assassination of President Kennedy feature wildly varying conclusions about his shooting – but it feels rather as if ITV’s Who Bombed Birmingham? had been countered by another drama arguing that the Irishmen were bang to rights.

Apart from warning against taking any faction as the absolute truth, the two Lockerbie dramatisations also show the power of casting. By having the likeable Colin Firth as Swire, the Sky drama encourages us to trust his views. Marquise is the protagonist of the BBC-Netflix version and also portrayed by a handsome actor – Patrick J Adams from Suits – but the scripts sets him as a somewhat cold and uptight Yank against a warmer Scottish copper played by Connor Swindells.

I was struck that younger people I know who watched both shows without much prior knowledge of the case were more convinced by the Sky/Firth take, even though it challenges the conclusions of the FBI and international courts. Yet, in an era so distrustful of Establishment and established versions, that may make the contrarian conclusion more attractive.

In this context, another intriguing test case is Lucy Letby, the former neonatal nurse serving a whole life sentence after conviction for seven murders and seven attempted murders of infants. Given the level of public interest, this seems a natural subject for a docudrama, and more than one was thought to be in preparation. That stalled when some newspapers, podcasts and MPs began to question the safety of the convictions. It should be noted that the Court of Appeal has twice refused Letby leave to appeal.

The broader point, though, is that it is plausible to imagine three or four Letby dramas, each with different takes.

This is partly because, as in the Lockerbie example, the evidence is largely circumstantial and arguable, although her defenders face the problem of why her team failed to call during two trials the rival expert witnesses on whom supporters now rely.

A single authoritative Letby docudrama is hard to imagine because the relationship between viewers and television now feels so different. In 1990, the audience was happy to accept ITV as a court of appeal. Today, television – an inevitable constituent of the derogatory term “mainstream media” favoured by political and social media doubters – would be seen by some as party to any potential cover- up or silencing of dissent.

Thirty-five years ago, the drama’s answer to the question Who Bombed Birmingham? was immediately accepted and acted on by those in power. Today, you suspect, it would be met with an official shrug or a contrary podcast.

Mr Bates vs the Post Office showed how faction can still activate public outrage although – 18 months after transmission – many postmasters have still not received adequate compensation, and prosecution of Post Office or Fujitsu bosses feels like a very distant prospect, perhaps impossibly so.

The comment by Toby Jones (Mr Bates) in his Bafta acceptance speech that the show had achieved nothing yet - and suggestions from ITV that funding and structural issues make similar dramas less likely in the future - mean that what should feel like another peak for journalistic fiction might not be.

Perhaps someone should make a docudrama about that.