Lockerbie

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.

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.

Pan Am Flight 103 exploded over Lockerbie on 21 December 1988, with 259 passengers and 11 Lockerbie residents losing their lives.

In 1998, Pan Am Flight 103 was bombed mid-flight over the Scottish town of Lockerbie, killing all 243 passengers and 16 crew members on-board. Falling wreckage then resulted in a further 11 fatalities.

Firth plays Jim Swire, a GP whose daughter Flora was a passenger on the flight. Her death led him to embark on a lifelong campaign for the truth. Jim travels across the world and navigates nebulous political divisions to represent British victims’ families, and get to the bottom of what happened that evening over Lockerbie.