In what is sure to be a grim and moving piece of television, Peacock is bringing the story of Pan Am Flight 103 to the screen in its upcoming series Lockerbie: A Search for Truth.
The project is inspired by the true-life events. It stars Academy Award Winner Colin Firth, along with Catherine McCormack, Rosanna Adams, Jemma Carlton, Harry Redding, Sam Troughton, Mark Bonner, Ardalan Esmaili, and Selwa Jghalef.
Otto Bathurst directed the series, which focuses on one grieving man who represents the families of the victims and their pursuit of the truth about the circumstances that led to the Boeing 747 being blown apart over the quiet Scottish town of Lockerbie.
Pan Am Flight 103, using the 747 named Clipper Maid Of The Seas, was a regularly scheduled Pan Am transatlantic flight from Frankfurt to Detroit via London and New York.
Shortly after 7pm on 21st December 1988, while the aircraft was over Lockerbie, it was destroyed by a bomb. All 243 passengers and 16 crew died, along with 11 residents of the town on the ground.
A joint UK/US investigation led to the arrest warrants being issued for two Libyan nationals in November 1991, and led to sanctions being placed on Libya.
Libyan leader Muammar Gaddafi always denied he had any personal knowledge of the attack but handed over the two men for trial at Camp Zeist, the Netherlands. Gaddafi accepted Libya’s responsibility for the attack, which he maintained was never sanctioned by him, and he paid compensation to the victims.
Abdelbaset al-Megrahi, a Libyan intelligence officer, was jailed for life after being found guilty of 270 counts of murder in connection with the bombing. In August 2009 the nationalist, socialist government of Scotland sparked fury when they released him on compassionate grounds after he was diagnosed with prostate cancer.
To this day, mystery surrounds exactly who was responsible and what happened, as during the Libyan Civil War the opposition claimed Gaddafi had personally ordered the bombing, and investigators have long believed that Megrahi did not act alone.
Retired East German Stasi agents were questioned about wider involvement in the attack, occurring during the Cold War. It has also been linked sleeper cell belonging to the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine which had been operating in West Germany in the lead-up to the bombing.
Lockerbie: A Search for Truth debuts on Peacock on January 2nd.