Colin Firth pictured on set in Bathgate for Lockerbie series
Actor Colin Firth has been pictured on the set of an upcoming drama series where he plays the role of a grieving father after the Lockerbie bombing.
Firth portrays Dr Jim Swire, who has long campaigned for justice for his daughter Flora after she died when Pan Am Flight 103 was blown up above Scotland on December 21, 1988.
The actor was pictured last week walking through a scene that appears to be set shortly after the plane debris crashed on to the town, killing 11 people on the ground. There were 259 deaths on the plane – all of the passengers and crew.
The Sky TV series, being filmed in Bathgate, West Lothian, sees Firth portraying the English doctor who “risks everything in memory of his daughter and the unflinching pursuit of truth and justice”.
The actor, 63, won an Academy Award and Bafta for playing George VI in The King’s Speech in 2010, and is known for Pride And Prejudice, Bridget Jones’s Diary and Love, Actually.
Along with his wife, Jane, Dr Swire has spearheaded a call for a full inquiry into Lockerbie. He told the BBC in December 2022 he wanted a United Nations court set up, instead of the case being dealt with by the US or Scotland, and has long wanted the evidence against the only man convicted of the attack – Libyan Abdelbaset Ali Mohamed al-Megrahi – to be reassessed.
The show is based on the book, The Lockerbie Bombing: A Father’s Search For Justice by Dr Swire and Peter Biddulph.
The five-part series, simply titled Lockerbie, will explore Dr Swire’s fight for action, and his being nominated as a spokesperson for the victims’ families, and look at the disaster and its aftermath.
Scottish playwright David Harrower, known for the play Blackbird, is the lead writer, and Otto Bathurst, who won a Bafta for BBC drama Peaky Blinders, is lead director. It is a co-production between Carnival Films, part of Universal International Studios, and Sky Studios.
Meanwhile, the BBC and Netflix have commissioned World Productions to make a six-part drama about the Lockerbie bombing. Novelist and screenwriter Jonathan Lee is lead writer and Michael Keillor, who worked on Line Of Duty will direct.