The Bombing of Pan Am 103
Courtesy of Netflix
While Netflix has a slew of highly-scored series, thanks in part to producing an astonishing amount of content, a new show stands out. The series currently has a 100% Rotten Tomatoes score among a handful of critics, but it’s unique on the Netflix top 10 list, where it currently sits in second place.
The show is The Bombing of Pan Am 103. While that may sound like it would be a documentary series, it’s actually a drama covering the events of the attack. It stars Sex Education’s Connor Swindells in certainly quite a different role than his former Netflix show.
The bombing of Pan Am flight 103 took place on December 21, 1988, when the plane was destroyed by a bomb over Scotland, killing 243 passengers and 16 crew members. The ensuing crash also killed 11 people on the ground. It was the deadliest terror attack in UK history, and one of the deadliest in all of Europe.
Who committed the attack? In 2001, Libyan Abdelbaset al-Megrahi was found guilty of 270 counts of murder after it was proven he was connected to the bombing and got a life sentence. He died in 2012 of cancer. Another man charged, Lamin Khalifah Fhimah, was acquitted instead. Much later in 2020, Libyan national Abu Agila Masud was arrested in 2022, pleaded not guilty and has a trial set in 2026 for his participation in the bombing.
The Netflix series is focused in a pair of investigations into the bombing. Swindells plays DS Ed McCusker and Peter Mullan plays DCS John Orr, who are real individuals who investigated the attack. Orr was later knighted for his work.
It’s somewhat unusual to see a dramatization of an attack like this as a Netflix miniseries rather than a documentary, and judging by these early reviews, it’s done a good job of telling the story. Here are a few excerpts:
- Espinof: “It’s a patient, meticulous, and deeply respectful series about the victims, finding its strength not in action scenes, but in its obsessive attempt to carefully reconstruct the truth.”
- Decider: “It doesn’t feel like Lee and his writers are at all trying to sensationalize the investigation. Heck, he doesn’t even play on viewers’ emotions when it comes to the bombing of the flight.”
As it stands, the only show The Bombing of Pan Am Flight 103 is behind is the #1 series, The Idaho Murders: College Nightmare, a documentary, not a dramatization, of a series of murders at the University of Idaho. Over the years, crime shows have been intensely popular on Netflix, and this week is no exception.
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Pick up my sci-fi novels the Herokiller series and The Earthborn Trilogy.