Lockerbie bombing drama starring Colin Firth is cruelly compelling
Lockerbie: A Search for Truth ★★★½
Binge
Sombre, often uncomfortable, and increasingly vexing as the investigatory stakes grow vast and obtuse, this British limited series based on the 1988 Lockerbie bombing and the subsequent quest for answers by the father of one of the victims depicts staggeringly painful moments. But it never allows for easy satisfaction or the simple righteousness of unadorned conviction. With a lead performance by Colin Firth that reveals what his character can’t give voice to, this is a cruelly compelling show.
Colin Firth as Jim Swire in Lockerbie: A Search for Truth.Credit: Graeme Hunter/SKY/Carnival
When a bomb exploded on Pan Am flight 103, 38 minutes after it took off from London bound for New York, all 259 people on board perished after the splintering plane plummeted from the sky; 11 more people in the Scottish town of Lockerbie died as debris peppered the town and surrounding countryside. One of the passengers was Flora Swire (Rosanna Adams), a glowing graduate student and the eldest child of English doctor Jim Swire (Firth). Something dies inside the upright GP that night, but something else takes root.
Adapted by the playwright David Harrower (Una) from Jim Swire’s 2021 book, The Lockerbie Bombing: A Father’s Search for Justice, with Otto Bathurst (Peaky Blinders) as the lead director, these five episodes chart from the outside the investigation into what remains the deadliest terrorist attack in British history.
The official lack of answers, whether for operational reasons or diplomatic insurance, weaponises the grief of Jim and his wife Jane (Catherine McCormack). Their anger is withering, their drive obsessive.
The show’s title makes a crucial distinction: it is “a” search for truth, not “the”. Jim’s increasingly demanding tactics, and the evolution of his beliefs about who was behind the bomb’s planting, have been criticised by the families of other Lockerbie victims, particularly in America. And compressing Jim’s complex story into a succinct single season requires a level of invention some will question – Scottish journalist Murray Guthrie (Sam Troughton), an ever-present figure prompting Jim, is a purely fictional character.
Colin Firth in Lockerbie: A Search for Truth.Credit: Graeme Hunter/NBC Universal / Carnival
The event that should have offered a degree of closure, the legally complex 2001 court case involving two Libyan officials handed over the by regime of Muammar Gaddafi, only adds to the divisions and conflicting theories. Firth embodies the unrelenting drive of Jim, even when the cost is troubling: he breaks the law to prove a point, and after Jane steps back, Jim risks neglecting Flora’s younger brother and sister because he can’t let her death go. At some point you may wonder whether he needs the labyrinthine case to continue because the alternative is too hard to comprehend.
Wallace, Gromit and a gnome named Norbot (centre) in Wallace & Gromit: Vengeance Most Fowl.Credit: AP
Wallace & Gromit: Vengeance Most Fowl ★★★★
Netflix
The only British institution I revere is the partnership between a cheese-loving inventor from England’s north and his can-do beagle. Wallace and Gromit, icons of stop-motion animation, have been delighting audiences since their debut in the 1989 short A Grand Day Out. Creator Nick Park’s frame-by-frame mix of gentle satire, fantastical plots, and eccentric companionship is one of the screen’s unimpeachable pleasures. They are peak plasticine.
Vengeance Most Fowl is not quite on the level of the one previous Wallace and Gromit feature, the 2005 masterpiece The Curse of the Were-Rabbit, but as an unexpected late addition to this far from Hollywood franchise it’s a welcome encapsulation of the project’s pillars. Park, working with co-director Merlin Crossingham, has even given fans a return visit of the duo’s best adversary: steely-eyed penguin criminal Feathers McGraw, last seen getting nicked in 1993’s The Wrong Trousers.
Out for revenge – cue the Cape Fear vibes – Feathers soon perverts Wallace’s latest invention, a robotic “smart gnome” named Norbot, designed for premium garden work and seemingly to annoy Gromit. Technology gone awry is a Wallace and Gromit staple, and the story soon takes in slapstick antics and glorious puns as it builds to a spin on the obligatory whirlwind chase sequence. Is it all a touch familiar? Sure. Does that matter? Not really. This movie is a joy.
Travis Fimmel returns as cold case detective James Cormack in season 2 of Black Snow.Credit: Stan
Black Snow (season 2)
Stan
It’s a tidy return for this Australian crime drama, which moves from the north of Queensland to the Sunshine Coast hinterland in the south, with police detective James Cormack (Travis Fimmel) once again investigating a cold case whose tendrils are tied into present-day inequities. As a local police officer with ties to a young woman missing for two decades, Megan Smart’s Samara Khalil is a strong foil for Fimmel – there’s a genuine emotional dynamic, not always conducive to collaboration, between the two. Let’s have more of these smart, solid Australian genre pieces.
Elton John during his final concert at Dodger Stadium on November 20, 2022.Credit: This Machine
Elton John: Never Too Late
Disney+
As an end-of-an-era documentary that unfolds as pop music icon Elton John prepares for his final live show in America, at Dodger Stadium in Los Angeles, Never Too Late can’t help being gently deferential to its subject. Co-directed by John’s husband, David Furnish, and RJ Cutler (Martha), the movie alternates between the British singer-songwriter’s current contentment and his chaotic breakthrough in the 1970s, when he enjoyed public hits and private misses. The 2019 biopic Rocketman covered some of this ground, but the documentary does feature Elton performing his hits.
Your Friend, Nate Bargatze
Netflix
American comic Nate Bargatze had a breakthrough moment in 2023 when his Saturday Night Live sketch, Washington’s Dream, rightfully went viral (it’s on SNL’s YouTube channel), but it’s his success as a stand-up comedian that’s consistently grown his profile. Bargatze’s new stand-up special doesn’t try to shift his appeal, rather it consolidates what’s worked for him. Your Friend uses observational humour, has no interest in culture wars, and is about clean as a contemporary comedian can be in 2024 – it’s also consistently funny. Expect a slew of imitators in the next few years.
Jimmy Donaldson presents Beast Games.
Beast Games
Amazon
Possessing one of the fakest smiles – both emotionally and physically – ever put on a television screen, YouTube superstar MrBeast (aka Jimmy Donaldson) moves to streaming as the needy host of this reality competition series. Nodding to Squid Game (which already has its own competition spin-off, Squid Game: The Challenge) and Donaldson’s dollar-fuelled online antics, Beast Games is a mostly unenjoyable and often disagreeable gamification of late-era capitalism. With new episodes being added weekly, 1000 competitors are being winnowed down, suffering multiple indignities as they chase an $8 million prize. The gameplay is dull, the philosophy bilious.
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