Lockerbie: A Search for Truth

What emerges is a determined chronicling of the tragedy and the inconsistencies surrounding it.

Lockerbie: A Search For The Truth is carried by Colin Firth, but its concentration on one man’s quest for the truth also keeps the show’s writers and producers from drifting into melodrama around a real-life terrorist act.

This drama is all the more punishing and pain-inducing – and gripping and impactful – because you know what’s to come. The question is not how it ends, but how we get there.

The supporting cast (including reliable British faces, like Mark Bonnar, and Iranian actor Ardalan Esmaili, who convincingly inhabits the convicted bomber, Abdelbaset al-Megrahi) orbit this stellar performance. But from the moment Swire realises his daughter has died – a gut punch that many viewers will find hard to watch – to the bitter end of his fight, this is Firth’s show.

Deeply moving in its strongest moments, this is a dispiriting, knotty, elusive story about absence of closure and the tragic denial of redemption.

As it progresses, Lockerbie often jumps jarringly through time and locations. It’s one of the drawbacks of an otherwise gripping series. The writing also cannot (or doesn’t want to) fully grasp the international political chess games played after the bombing. Which nation or group was behind the plane crash? Jim spends his life seeking an answer, with Lockerbie turning his mission into an immersive and poignant viewing experience.

There’s some controversy surrounding this show, as there are many people who don’t agree with Jim’s hypothesis about what actually occurred that fateful day, but Lockerbie reads more as a character study about Jim and his perspective than as propaganda trying to get viewers to agree with him — and Firth makes it well worth a watch.

It’s not that “Lockerbie: A Search for Truth” is bad. Much of it is strikingly put together and Firth’s performance buoys those moments of emotion with skill and empathy. .... When the show cuts to the devastating news footage of the actual event, one can’t help but wonder if a documentary would have made more sense for telling this still-important story.

This initial offering is full of good performances and good intentions but remains affectless. An intriguing puzzle only to anyone too young to remember the event – or at least the headlines and the shock of the country – for themselves.

I’d say the show understands that it’s becoming as distanced from its emotional center as Jim is, as obsessed with making this a whodunnit at the expense of a story of self-care and healing. But I wonder if these same beats would have played more successfully in a feature film or a tighter miniseries.

This drama is strongest when it focuses on the human fallout.

The series is a handy primer on the basics of what happened and who it affected, especially after the world’s attention shifted elsewhere. But it also struggles to place Jim’s plight in a broader context.

A venture that works hard to paint its subject as a noble crusader, even though much of its action suggests he was anything but.