Telling the stories of six victims of Britain’s deadliest terrorist attack has long been an intensely personal project for Alan Clements. The Managing Director of Two Rivers Media and his then partner (now wife) Kirsty Wark, were two of the first news people at the scene when a bomb exploded on Pan Am Flight 103 over the Scottish town on 21 December 1988. All 259 passengers and crew, and 11 Lockerbie residents, were killed.

Clements and Wark, who was then an anchor on BBC One’s Breakfast Time, were leaving a wrap party in Glasgow for the political show Left, Right and Centre when Clements was told by BBC top brass: “Get into this car; something’s happened at Lockerbie.”

As the BBC airs Two Rivers’ powerful documentary Lockerbie: Our Story, Clements tells Television: “People say you can’t sober up instantly, but I can tell you that’s not true. I was producing for Kirsty through the night, and she went on air at 6am, live from Lockerbie. There were still flames in the streets, and bodies on the roof of the building we were broadcasting from.”

A sickly smell enveloped the town. Clements recalls: “Aviation fuel has a very particular smell. Fires were burning everywhere, but it was the smell of the fuel that stays with me.”

TV has recently fixed its lens on the Lockerbie tragedy: BBC One/Netflix drama The Bombing of Pan Am 103 is on BBC iPlayer, and Lockerbie: A Search for Truth premiered on Sky Atlantic in January. Another Sky documentary series, Lockerbie, which Clements rates highly, came out in 2023.

Clements himself made a documentary ­– The Lockerbie Bombing for ITV in 2013 – but always felt a need for a film that focused on the victims rather than who brought the plane down – which, almost 40 years on, is still disputed.  

“We wanted to tell the story that had not been told. There’s a tiny bit of politics in the film, but it’s mostly human heart”

When Clements approached the BBC, Clare Sillery, Head of Commissioning, Documentaries, and Louise Thornton, Head of Commissioning, BBC Scotland, were keen; helpfully, the corporation was looking for a ­companion documentary to air alongside The Bombing of Pan Am 103.

David Harron, Commissioning Executive for BBC Scotland, who worked closely on the series with London-based Aisling O’Connor, Commissioning Editor for Documentaries, says: “There have been lots of films on Lockerbie over the years, but this was attractive because it had the simple idea of how people cope with something like this for the rest of their lives. This isn’t something you get over. It has lived with them for a long, long time and will continue to live with them, and their children.”

Stephen Bennett was the first choice of Clements, who executive-produces, to make the documentary. Bennett has bagged multiple RTS and BAFTA awards – including last year’s RTS Scotland Best Director prize for the BBC Two Storyville film Keeping It Up: The Story of Viagra.

Clements says of Bennett: “He is unequalled as a director at dealing with people who have gone through traumatic events and getting the best story out of them, without making their situation worse. Stephen brings out emotion – not in a mawkish way but in a totally genuine way.”

This found favour with Harron, who has made many programmes with the director, including Eminent Monsters, an exploration of psychiatry’s collusion with state-sponsored torture. “One thing Stephen does as masterfully as anyone is empathising with his characters,” says Harron. “He draws out the below-the-surface emotion. Dunblane: Our Story was a good example of that.”

That documentary was made to mark the 20th anniversary of the March day in 1996 when a gunman walked into a primary school in Dunblane near Stirling and shot dead 16 pupils and their teacher. It was directed by Bennett and executive-produced by Clements when he was at STV Productions. Bennett interviewed people who had never before talked publicly about the Dunblane massacre, including a survivor who was shot as a five-year-old.

The Dunblane film became a template for Lockerbie: Our Story as Bennett looked for contributors “with a spread of backgrounds and nationalities across the UK, who had enough to say and felt they could talk. Some just couldn’t do it. We spoke to a lot of people, and for some families the grief is too enormous.”

Potential contributors were sent a link to Bennett’s Dunblane documentary as a “reference point”, he says. “It’s a hard film to watch, but [it shows] what we’re trying to achieve. The ­Dunblane and Lockerbie [films] are love letters to the past, a cri de coeur.”

Lockerbie: Our Story tells the stories of six people who died on the Pan Am flight: black British hairdresser Olive Gordon; Greek shipping magnate Minas Kulukundis; young banker Tim Burman; Terri Saunders and Billy MacAllister, a couple who were buried together; and Helga Mosey, a promising teenage musician.

The programme-makers deliberately eschewed the Lockerbie bombing’s controversies. “That’s already been done,” says Bennett. “Sky did a phenomenal job in their documentary series. The promise we made to our contributors is that we wanted to tell the story that had not been told. There’s a tiny bit of politics in the film, but it’s mostly human heart.”

Family and friends pay tribute to the six victims, recalling joyful moments as well as the heartrending grief. In talking about his childhood memories of his father, Minas, John says: “My father has to be more than the event that killed him.”

The grief never dissipates. As Helga’s mother, Lisa, says: “Your life is halved when your child is gone.”

Once filming started, all the contributors were helped, says Bennett, by “good mental health protocols” at Two Rivers and the sterling work of producer Kelly Machin, who “worked so hard” with the contributors. Before transmission, Bennett showed the film to those who told their stories. One viewing stands out for the director: “Before we started filming, the family didn’t like talking about Olive Gordon; there wasn’t even a photo of her [on display] – it was something that always upset them.

“When I showed them the film, there was a huge family watching – and a massive photo of Olive on the mantelpiece. Tanneisha [her niece] came up to me and said that making the film had ‘healed the family’.”

Lockerbie: Our Story is frequently ­harrowing but the programme-makers never lose sight of what audiences can endure.

 Bennett tells of one sequence that did not make the final cut: “Two of the contributors talked about seeing their loved ones with their heads literally smashed in. 

‘I can understand why they shared that, but it’s a bridge too far for an audience.”

The film, despite the unimaginable horror of the bombing, is a testament to the human spirit and people’s ability to endure. Though Lockerbie: Our Story is a “film about grief”, says Clements, it’s as much about “resilience”. He adds: “What Stephen and the team have achieved is absolutely fantastic. I’m genuinely so proud of this film.” 

Lockerbie: Our Story, made by Two Rivers Media, aired on BBC Scotland and BBC Two earlier this month, and is on BBC iPlayer