Critic Reviews

Mostly, though, this is a compelling work, led by Firth’s lionhearted performance.

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.

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.

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.

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

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.

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.