THE BOMBING OF PAN AM 123
There's always a danger when two films or dramas dealing with the same historical event are released that the one that comes out second fails to excite audiences..
Inevitably viewers who have seen the first version will measure the latter against it.
And if the earlier version is regarded as having done a really good job, the subsequent production is left fighting an uphill battle to convince audiences it is worth investing their time.
Earlier this year, Sky Atlantic gave us the first of two TV dramas this year about the December 1988 bomb attack on Pan Am 123 over the Scottish village of Lockerbie that killed 270 people.
Otto Bathurst, Jim Loach and David Harrower's 'Lockerbie: The Search for Truth' focused on victims campaigner Dr Jim Swire's quest to find out who was responsible for the attack and his gradual belief that the only man convicted of the bombing, Abdelbaset al-Megrahi was innocent.
Jonathan Lee, Adam Morane-Griffiths and Gillian Roger-Park's six part BBC1 drama 'The Bombing of Pan Am 123' isn't concerned about the Libyan national's guilt or innocence.
Instead it zones in on the painstaking efforts by Scottish, American, German, Swiss and Maltese investigators to discover who bombed the Pan Am flight and build a case against them.
Like 'Lockerbie: The Search for Truth,' the events of December 21, 1988 are recreated in disturbing detail.
Director Michael Keillor does not hold back on showing the devastation following the bombing of the flight from Frankfurt to Detroit - even on a fraction of the budget that the Sky series enjoyed.
Events are seen through the eyes of Connor Swindells' Detective Ed McCusker as he visits the scene and finds himself comforting Archie McCormick's Steven Flannigan whose parents and sister died in their home while he was running a Christmas errand.
There is no doubt this is a very victim focused drama with Keillor, Lee, Morane-Griffiths and Roger-Park going to great lengths to show how the Scottish police and the Lockerbie community were very sensitive to the needs of families on both sides of the Atlantic who lost loved ones.
By way of contrast, the FBI and CIA put their own interests first and fail US families and other victims.
Peter Mullan is superb as Detective Chief Superintendent John Orr who finds himself thrust into the role of managing a trans-Atlantic investigation of the biggest mass murder in UK history.
He is ably supported on the Scottish end of the investigation by Swindells' diligent McCusker, Tony Curran and James Harkness's detectives Harry Bell and Sandy Gay and Molly Geddes as a uniformed officer Lauren Aitken.
Patrick J Adams does a solid job too as FBI agent Dick Marquise who finds himself at odds with Terence Maynard's CIA agent Gabe Lepley while US intelligence chiefs insist on concealing vital pieces of information from their Scottish counterparts.
This often puts Marquise in a unenviable, embarrassing position as he faces criticism from the American victims' families and Merritt Weaver's no nonsense Congressional aide, Kathryn Turman who advocates on their behalf.
Lee, Morane-Griffiths and Roger-Park also do a really good job conveying the complexity of an investigation of this scale and international reach.
Eddie Marian's US explosives expert Tom Thurman and Nicholas Gleaves' British equivalent Allen Feraday painstakingly recreate the bombing in tests to understand the type of circuit board used.
As the Scottish investigative team travels to Washington and Malta, they encounter some wariness from the authorities in both countries and in their discussions with Germans and Swiss counterparts, there are also frustrations.
While Orr and McCusker come and go with Douglas Hodge and Kevin McKidd's senior officers Stuart Henderson and Tom McCulloch taking over the reins at various points, the drama is effective in depicting the personal toll the investigation took on the police.
Arguably, though, the show's strongest moments come in the way it advocates for investigations to be victim centred - with McCusker going above and beyond the call of duty in taking a keen interest in Steven Flannigan's life.
Phyllis Logan carries off the role of Lockerbie local Moira Shearer too with great dignity, as her character and other volunteers prepare boxes for victims' families of their loved ones' belongings once they are no longer forensically needed.
While occasionally the dialogue is a bit stiff, for the most part 'The Bombing of Pan Am 123' succeeds because it's compassion shines brightly through.
Lee, Morane-Griffiths and Roger-Park's six episode drama provides a different counterpoint to Bathurst, Loach and Harrower's version of events and it's good to report on this occasion that it more than holds its own.
('The Bombing of Pan Am 123' was broadcast on BBC1 between May 18-June 2, 2025 with all episodes made available on the BBC iPlayer on May 18, 2025)
DEPT. Q, S1
And now for an investigation of a different kind in Netflix's new Tartan Noir show 'Dept. Q'.
Or is it, really all that Tartan?
The nine part Scottish thriller is actually adapted from a Danish series of crime novels by Jussi Adler-Olsen.
And like a lot of Scandi noir such as 'The Killing' or 'The Bridge,' it's full of elaborate gruesome deaths usually involving some kind of torture.
Matthew Goode plays Detective Chief Inspector Carl Morck, a cynical English cop based in Edinburgh who has a high opinion of himself and a low opinion of nearly everybody else.
The only person Morck appears to have time for is his colleague, Jamie Sives' DCI James Hardy.
But we quickly learn both were ambushed and wounded by a masked gunman after turning up at the home of a man with a knife stuck in his head, while a uniformed patrol officer Angus Yellowlees' Police Constable Anderson was also killed.
While Morck escaped with a wound to his face, Hardy is in hospital and left paralysed from the waist down.
Ordered by his boss, Kate Dickie's commanding officer Moira Jacobsen to go to Kelly MacDonald's psychiatrist Rachel Irving, Morck is a reluctant participant and when he is not attending therapy, he generally irritates everyone in the office.
Jacobsen, however, offers him a chance to begin afresh, heading up a special code case unit known as Dept Q and the chance to pick his first case.
Unenthused, he is given Alexej Manvelov's Syrian refugee Akram Salim as a civilian assistant and eventually Leah Byrne's Detective Constable Rose Dickson who is trying to resurrect her career after suffering a breakdown over knocking down elderly pedestrians during a police chase.
Housed in the grotty basement bathroom in police headquarters, Morck appears to be going through the motions in his new role.
Despite not being a police officer, Salim actually turns out to be a much better cop than Morck anticipates and it is he who suggests Dept Q's first case should be the disappearance four years earlier of a public prosecutor, Chloe Pirrie's Merritt Lingard.
Before her disappearance on a ferry, Lingard lost a high profile case against Douglas Russell's dodgy businessman Graham Finch who was accused of murdering his wife.
With Morck and Salim accepting there is only a slim chance that Merritt Lingard is still alive, their investigation examines the Finch case, the stabbing of a prisoner and drug addict Ellen Bannerman's Kirsty Atkins who offered to be a witness, Merritt's working relationships with Mark Bonnar's Lord Advocate Stephen Burns and Patrick Kennedy's fellow prosecutor Liam Taylor and also her sexual relationships.
With Hardy also chipping into the investigation, the team delve into her troubled relationship with her father Clive Russell's Jamie Lingard on the Isle of Mhor and the circumstances around the beating of her brother Tom Bulpett's William Lingard during a robbery involving her then boyfriend, Fraser Saunders' Harry Jennings who subsequently jumped to his death on a ferry.
At the time of Merritt's disappearance on the Isle of Mhor ferry, William was seen in an agitated state but the disability sustained as a result of his beating means he is in care and is unable to speak about why he was so distressed.
Shirley Henderson's Claire Marsh, a former housekeeper for Merritt and William in later life is fiercely protective of him.
With Morck prone to angry outbursts every time the circumstances around his shooting are raised, his ramshackle crew diligently follow the evidence while Merritt languishes in a cold, grotty hyperbaric chamber goaded by her captors in trying to guess the reason for her four year incarceration.
Will the team be able to figure out why Merritt disappeared and rescue her?
Will Morck be able to keep a lid on his fierce temper before it jeopardises the cold case investigation?
Adapted for the small screen by director Scott Frank, Chandni Lakhani, Stephen Greenhorn and Colette Kane, 'Dept Q' is a decent enough thriller that's not without its flaws.
Sharing directorial duties with Frank on three episodes, Elisa Amoruso and her colleague deliver a handsome looking show.
The nine episode run, though, seems a little excessive and the scripts feel a bit padded out.
Attempts at wisecracking dialogue from Frank and his writers also occasionally seems a little forced.
And you can't help but feel that it comes off worse when measured against ITV and Britbox's dark slice of Tartan Noir, 'Irvine Welsh's Crime' which really is the Real McCoy.
Goode's cynical detective schtick is not really convincing and a bit irritating, with the actor struggling to have the same kind of darkly comic impact that Gary Oldman's genuinely cynical 'Slow Horses' boss Jackson Lamb has in the hit Apple TV+ show.
However it is the supporting cast - in particular Manvelov, Byrne, MacDonald, Pirrie, Bannerman and Sives who most impress along with Gilly Gilchrist as the Isle of Mhor Police Constable John Cunningham.
By way of contrast, Bonnar, Henderson, Clive Russell, Bulpert, Dickie, Kennedy, Douglas Russell, Michelle Duncan as Dr Fiona Wallace, Steven Miller and Kai Alexander as Harry Jennings' brother Lyle, Alison Peebles as his mum Ailsa and Gordon Brown as a former detective Fergus Dunbar are saddled with rather stiffly written roles.
Aaron McVeigh who plays Morck's stepson Jasper Stewart and Sanjeev Kohli as his housemate Martin Fleming also have little to work with and add very little to proceedings.
Nevertheless if you can stick with the show and get over its shortcomings, 'Dept Q' does end up drawing you in to its preposterous torture premise and race against time.
However you'll also find yourself being more intrigued by Manvelov's Syrian refugee and a backstory surrounding his past that has yet to be revealed.
Akram Salim is so entertaining, I'd actually watch a show that was built around him if it further developed his Syrian Popeye Doyle persona.
That would certainly provide welcome relief from Morck's rather stilted, cynical one liners.
('Dept Q' was made available for streaming on Netflix on May 29, 2025)
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