December 21, 1988. Pan Am Flight 103, bound from London Heathrow to New York JFK, is destroyed by a bomb over the Scottish town of Lockerbie. All 259 passengers and crew are killed, along with 11 people on the ground. Among the dead is Flora Swire, 23 years old, a medical student. Her father, Dr. Jim Swire (Colin Firth), is a Worcestershire GP.
Jim Swire refuses to grieve quietly. He wants to know who built the bomb, who authorised it, and whether the British and American governments knew of the threat in advance and chose not to act. His campaign for truth will last thirty-five years.
The five-part series follows Swire from the harrowing immediate aftermath of the bombing through the years of investigation, the landmark Scottish Court sitting in the Netherlands that convicted Libyan intelligence officer Abdelbaset al-Megrahi in 2001, Swire’s controversial friendship with Megrahi and his growing conviction that Megrahi was wrongly convicted, Megrahi’s compassionate release in 2009, and the continuing appeals and inquiries that have still not definitively resolved who was responsible for the worst terrorist atrocity on British soil.
Colin ages over three decades in the role — from a man in his mid-forties in the shock of loss, to a man in his late seventies still fighting.