Crime
Prime Target
This math-centric thriller comes with an interesting premise. But Prime Target comes with some primary problems, too.
Flora Swire climbed aboard Pam Am Flight 103, full of smiles and promise. The young British woman was heading to New York for Christmas—her first Christmas away from home—and ready for a little adventure.
“Go and have the time of your life,” her father, Jim Swire, told her as she left for the airport.
She never made it to New York. No one on that flight did. The plane blew up over the Scottish town of Lockerbie. The debris covered the ground for miles.
Terrorism, the authorities said. Someone smuggled a bomb aboard and let it blow. But who did it? How? And why?
Jim, grappling with grief, wants to know. He’s not accepting the government’s official assessment. And he won’t stop until he gets some real answers.
Jim’s journey from grieving father to passionate advocate starts at a Lockerbie memorial service—one attended by the British Prime Minister and the Minister of Transportation, both mumbling words of condolence and reassurance. Even then, Jim felt the government wasn’t doing all it could for him and the rest of those touched by the tragedy. Just a handful of blocks away from the service, Pan Am 103’s last passengers lay in the town’s ice rink, covered in sheets. And the families weren’t allowed to see them.
“They bring us here to sing hymns and listen to sermons, and we’re expected to leave without saying goodbye?” Jim fumes to another attendee. “It’s inhumane.”
But Jim’s new friend, Murray Guthrie, happens to be a journalist, and he encourages Jim to go anyway. Jim’s a doctor, after all: If anyone can get in, he can.
Jim does sneak in to see his daughter—experiencing all the grief and horror you’d expect, but at least he says goodbye. And he and Murray begin talking. Murray suggests that the government is covering up aspects of the crime. And in its rush to bring the culprits to justice, it just might be pointing to the wrong set of terrorists.
Nothing can bring Jim’s daughter back. He knows that all too well. But to bury Flora under a heap of lies isn’t right. He believes Murray is onto something, and Jim is willing to write as many letters, give as many speeches, poke as many powerful people as he can until someone dares to listen.
Jane Swire, Jim’s wife, understands her husband’s desire to get to the truth. But as time goes on and Jim’s crusade stretches into years, she begins to wonder, Is it worth it? Is it?
Spoiler warning: The story’s not done yet. The real Jim Swire has been in and out of the public eye for more than three decades now, with much of his work dramatized in Peacock’s original series Lockerbie: A Search for Truth. Just two weeks before the show’s release, Swire was interviewed by the BBC, where he pushed the government to “release all the documentation about Lockerbie.”
The miniseries, based on Swire’s own book, Lockerbie: A Father’s Search for Justice, obviously casts Swire in a positive light. Played by Oscar winner Colin Firth, the Peacock show’s version of Swire is both passionate and persuasive: a simple, smart father who just wants to get justice for his daughter.
It’s beyond the scope of this review to talk about whether Swire’s efforts—on screen or in real life—are merited or not. We can say, however, that the miniseries has its own merits … and its own problems.
Lockerbie: A Search for Truth is a multi-decade whodunit, wherein Jim and Murray follow up leads and ferret out inconsistencies. And for the most part, it unfolds with a sort of slow-burn decorum. The drama plays out in newsrooms and living rooms, airports and government chambers. It does not venture into bedchambers, for the most part, because they’re simply not part of the story. Language, too, seems fairly minimal early on. Lockerbie plays its story straight, without gratuity or sensationalism.
But the story is pinned on one of the most tragic air disasters in history, and it doesn’t shy away from those horrors. In the first episode, we don’t just see airplane wreckage rain from the sky but bodies, too. One hangs from a tree, another has crushed a car. One farmer, on whose land much of the debris field rests, cradles a baby he found in the wreckage. “Couldn’t leave her lying there,” the farmer tells officials. “God rest her soul.”
The Lockerbie bombing claimed 170 lives in all—not counting, of course, the trauma suffered by the loved ones left to grieve. Lockerbie: A Search for Truth is an engrossing miniseries, but its content is not to be taken lightly, as those loved ones well know.
(Editor’s Note: Plugged In is rarely able to watch every episode of a given series for review. As such, there’s always a chance that you might see a problem that we didn’t. If you notice content that you feel should be included in our review, send us an email at [email protected], or contact us via Facebook or Instagram, and be sure to let us know the episode number, title and season so that we can check it out. )
Flora Swire leaves Britain for the United States on Pan Am Flight 103. She strikes up a conversation with a young man and sings Christmas carols with the rest of the plane’s passengers. But as she begins to ask the flight attendant something, the plane is rocked by an explosion. Soon after, the Swire family hear reports that Flora’s flight may have crashed, and the town of Lockerbie, Scotland, is pelted with the wreckage.
The bomb and crash itself is harrowing. We hear the explosion above the airplane (but the camera leaves before the full tragedy unfolds there). The plane screams to the ground, aflame, as fiery debris pelts the ground, nearly hitting people as they scramble away. People are blown backward from a blast. We learn the plane crashed into a filling station.
We learn that 170 people lost their lives in the tragedy, and we see many of the victims. We hear one fall to the ground with a thump. Other bodies hang in trees or rest on cars. Corpses are bloodied and sometimes mangled. A farmer holds a dead baby in his arms, and he tells authorities that “There’s more. All over. I stopped counting after 50.” Apparently real news footage captures a picture of a sock-clad foot resting on a roof. (We can’t see the rest of the body.) Lockerbie residents died in the crash, as well: One young boy pedals his bike to where his home had been and where he’d just said goodbye to his parents. “Where’s my mom and dad, Mrs. Walker?” the boy asks. “Where did they go?”
Later, Jim gains access to the Lockerbie ice rink, which is serving as an impromptu morgue. Sheet-covered bodies are lined along the ice, and an attending doctor—against orders—leads Jim to Flora’s body. “Prepare yourself,” the doctor warns. And while the camera doesn’t show us Flora’s face, Jim sees it—and is horrified. Jim makes his way to Flora’s foot and uncovers it instead, holding the gray limb in his hands. (The kindly doctor cuts a lock of Flora’s hair and gives it to a grateful Jim.)
Months later, Jane walks into Flora’s still untouched room and picks up a shoe. She seems to envision, or imagine, herself falling from the sky as Flora would’ve. Later, she tells a governmental minister that she has dreams, almost every night, of Flora falling: She learned that her daughter could’ve been awake and alert for as much as 15 seconds as she fell—fully aware that she was going to die. And then she counts out 15 seconds to emphasize just how long that timeframe was.
Jim and Murray begin to uncover evidence of negligence and bad decision-making. We hear that threats were made against flights such as Pan Am 103: One was dismissed as a hoax, and when a warning was issued, it got lost under a stack of papers.
We hear the word “d—n.” Jim and Jane pop open a bottle of champagne and toast their daughter’s posthumous acceptance to Cambridge. Jim and other grievers gather in a Lockerbie church for a memorial service, where Jim dismissively mentions sermons and hymns. Someone else talks about God.
Paul Asay has been part of the Plugged In staff since 2007, watching and reviewing roughly 15 quintillion movies and television shows. He’s written for a number of other publications, too, including Time, The Washington Post and Christianity Today. The author of several books, Paul loves to find spirituality in unexpected places, including popular entertainment, and he loves all things superhero. His vices include James Bond films, Mountain Dew and terrible B-grade movies. He’s married, has two children and a neurotic dog, runs marathons on occasion and hopes to someday own his own tuxedo. Feel free to follow him on Twitter @AsayPaul.
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