Sky and Peacock have announced a drama based on Lockerbie disaster.
Entitled Lockerbie, the mini-series will be based on the bombing of Pan Am Flight 103 and the search for justice by Dr Jim Swire and his wife Jane who lost their beloved daughter, Flora, in the air disaster in 1988. The drama is based on the book The Lockerbie Bombing: A Father’s Search for Justice by Jim Swire and Peter Biddulph, along with multiple other sources. The five-part series will be written by Academy Award nominees Jim Sheridan and Kirsten Sheridan.
All 259 passengers and crew were killed when the bomb exploded over Lockerbie 38 minutes after take-off, with a further 11 residents losing their life as the plane came down over the quiet, Scottish town. Thirteen years later, in 2001, Libyan national Abdelbaset al-Megrahi was convicted of the crime and later released on compassionate grounds in 2009.
Shortly after the Lockerbie bombing, one of the worst terrorist attacks in history, some families of the victims joined together to launch a campaign for truth and justice. Among them was Dr Jim Swire whose campaign has taken him to the sand dunes of Libya to meet face-to-face with Colonel Gaddafi, to 10 Downing Street to meet with successive Prime Ministers and to the corridors of power in the US where he worked with the American victims’ groups to mount pressure on Washington for tighter airport security, well before 9/11.
The moving series will explore events from 1988 to the present day while providing an intimate account of a man, a husband, and a father who pushes his marriage, his health, and his sanity to the edge.
Jim and Kirsten Sheridan:
“The bombing of Pan Am Flight 103 was one of the world’s deadliest terror attacks that continues to have widespread implications for the meaning of justice in the US, Scotland and Libya. Over 30 years on, this series takes an intimate and very personal look at the aftermath of the disaster, and we are grateful to all of those, particularly Jim and Jane, who have entrusted us to tell their story, and the story of their loved ones, on screen.”
The series, which is due to begin production later this year, is a co-production between UCP and Sky Studios, produced with Universal International Studios’ Carnival Films for Sky and Peacock. Both Universal International Studios and UCP are divisions of Universal Studio Group. It is the first scripted co-commission from Sky and sister company Peacock, NBCUniversal’s streaming service.
The series is expected to air in 2023 on Sky in the UK, Ireland, Germany and Italy. It will stream on Peacock in the US. In 1993 ITV’s Emmerdale came under fire for creating an almost identical situation when a foreign plane crashed over the village of Beckindale to boost the programme’s then ‘boring’ image and increase stagnant ratings.
