Netflix And BBC One Team Up For True Crime Drama Lockerbie
Two of the biggest forces in TV are teaming up for a new drama: Netflix and the BBC are developing a new drama series that tells the story of the Lockerbie bombing and its aftermath. Dramas based on a true and tragic events, like BBC One’s The Sixth Commandment and ITVX’s Litvinenko are always both poignant and enthralling, and Lockerbie aims to hit the same balance.
It’s being written by novelist Johnathan Lee and will air on BBC One before being released for streaming on Netflix.
What is Lockerbie about?
Coming soon after Netflix’s docuseries about the MH370 crash, the miniseries aims to tell the whole Lockerbie story, from the attack on and crash of Pam Am 103 in the late 1980s to the most recent legal developments last year.
The incident occurred in December 1988, when the flight was passing the small, quiet town of Lockerbie in Scotland and a bomb exploded in the luggage hold. 270 people were killed and the attack became a turning point in aviation history. “The Pan Am 103 Disaster and the global manhunt it spawned was a defining event in world history – one that contains so many instances of resilience and courage that deserve to be honoured and understood,” says Lee.
The plane was en-route to JFK airport, and both the UK and US began an extensive investigation, and the six episodes of the show will focus on it.
What else do we know?
The BBC’s synopsis explains that “From the initial exhaustive search for evidence on the ground in Scotland, via the US and Malta to the trial at Camp Zeist in 2000, the drama takes us right up to the most recent indictment at the end of 2022.”
Lockerbie currently has no cast members attached to it, but is being produced by MGM Television and Adam Morane-Griffiths, known for his work on the film Wimbledon and thriller In Darkness. It’s also being worked on by World Productions, the studio that made Line of Duty and the David Tennant led film United, about the Munich air disaster.
When will it be released?
The BBC and Netflix are set to begin filming the miniseries later this year, with a release date likely sometime in 2024, available on streaming through both iPlayer and Netflix itself.
