Colin Firth Explores a Father’s Grief in 'Lockerbie: A Search for Truth'

How does one deal with unimaginable grief? What do you do when the death of your loved one is an international news story? How do you handle it when you can’t get the answers you so desperately need? Those heartbreaking questions are the pulsating undercurrent to the new Peacock series Lockerbie: A Search for Truth. 

On December 21, 1988,  a bomb exploded on Pan Am Flight 103 shortly after it left London heading for New York City. All 259 (243 passengers plus 16 crew members) and 11 residents of the small Scottish town of Lockerbie were killed instantly. Twenty-three-year-old graduate student Flora Swire (Rosanna Adams) was flying to New York to spend Christmas with her boyfriend when she was tragically killed. In one of the show’s more gut-wrenching moments, Flora’s father Dr. Jim Swire (Colin Firth) kisses her on her forehead and says to her, “Go and have the time of your life.” 

Flora is seen chatting with her seatmate while other passengers sing “Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer” before the terror occurs. The series so tangibly captures the joyful innocence of those final seconds, combined with the horror immediately after, setting the tone for the entire series.

The five-episode series, a joint production of Peacock and Sky, follows Jim’s quest to discover what happened on that fateful flight and who was responsible. Throughout the series, based on Swire’s memoir The Lockerbie Bombing: A Father’s Search For Justice, different questions weave in and out. Why was the Pan Am flight so empty so close to the holidays? Who were the mysterious government agents who appeared in Lockerbie so soon after the plane crashed? What terrorist warnings did the American and British governments ignore? Why has there never been an independent inquiry into the Lockerbie disaster?

However, the series is less about discovering the answers to those queries and more about how Jim’s quest for the truth provided him with a way to manage his grief— perhaps, to feel like he was in control of the uncontrollable. The families of the victims chose Swire as their spokesperson. His story becomes everyone’s story. 

Haunted by what her daughter’s final seconds must have been like, Jim’s wife Jane (a fantastic Catherine McCormack) is more quiet with her sorrow. Every time her husband takes a flight, she imagines the worst. Frustrated by her husband’s myopic crusade, she tells him she chooses to be among the living, enjoying her children and grandchildren. “The only truth is we’ll never really know what happened, and that breaks my heart,” she tells her husband. 

Intrepid Scottish journalist Murray Guthrie (Sam Troughton) joins Jim in his relentless pursuit of the truth, often feeding Jim information he’s discovered. “You may never find the answers you are looking for. You know that,” he tells Jim. Troughton’s character is an amalgamation of several people. Part of the “some names, characters, and scenes have been changed or fictionalized for dramatic purposes” appears at the beginning of every episode. Troughton is a solid performer, but it often feels like Murray is there to hear Jim’s theories. 

Always in a suit and tie, Swire gives up most of his life in search of justice for his daughter. He makes questionable choices (among them seeing if he can get a fake bomb through security and meeting face-to-face with Muammar Gaddafi), and his opinion about who is and isn’t guilty of the crime is constantly evolving. A great deal of time is spent on the trial of Abdelbaset al-Megrahi (Ardalan Esmaili), a Libyan national and the only person ever convicted of the bombings. Esmail gently humanizes al-Megrahi, the man supposedly the villain of the attack. 

As Jim goes down the rabbit hole of conspiracy theories, the series itself goes back and forth on al-Megrahi’s actual guilt or innocence. What he symbolizes, however, is that Jim must constantly go after something. It’s almost as if, once he finds out the truth, then he will have to truly accept that his daughter has died. 

The series truly belongs to Firth, who ages decades throughout the series and makes Jim’s grief the palpable driving force. Firth gives Jim a kind demeanor, but also the nuance of a man who is coming undone. 

Now, more than 36 years after the crash, the saga continues. A trial for alleged bombmaker Abu Agila Masud is set to begin in May. The tragedy will also be a Netflix series, simply titled Lockerbie, starring Patrick J. Adams, Connor Swindells, and Merritt Wever later this year. 

Towards the end of the series, a young woman asks about the Lockerbie disaster. She’s never heard of it. Ultimately, amid all the conspiracy theories, the true message of the series is that grief lasts much longer than a news cycle. A parent never gets over the loss of a child.  

All episodes of Lockerbie: A Search for Truth are streaming on Peacock starting Thursday, January 2, 2025.