Towards the end of Lockerbie: A Search for Truth, Jim Swire (Colin Firth) meets a woman who asks about the pin on his lapel. When he explains that this is to honor the victims of the infamous bombing, her face is expressionless. More than 20 years earlier, Jim lost his daughter in the 1988 attack that brought down a commercial airliner over the small Scottish town. As the memory of the crash begins to fade from the public consciousness, Jim – a real-life doctor to whom the series is dedicated – has undertaken a long and lonely crusade to uncover the truth about how hundreds of people lost their lives.

These efforts are ongoing; The trial of alleged co-conspirator Abu Agila Masud will begin next year after he was indicted in 2020. This reality confronts screenwriters David Harrower and Maryam Hamidi and directors Otto Bathurst and Jim Loach as they dramatize Swire’s memoir The Lockerbie Bombing: A Father’s Search for Justice. The five-part season, a co-production between Sky and Peacock, begins in the truest sense of the word with a deadly, concussive bang as fiery aircraft fragments rained down on the Scottish landscape and next to the 259th Passengers and crew also kill eleven locals. But soon he follows Jim into the dark, boring weeds. There is no hard evidence in Jim’s investigation – just years of legal cases that hinge on technical details like the metal composition of a tiny bomb component. Lockerbie: A Search for Truth accurately reflects its theme, even if that theme doesn’t make for a heartbreaking thriller.

Firth, by far the most famous member of the cast, sets the tone as the mild-mannered Swire, a gentle man driven to obsession and outrage by his family’s tragedy. Much to the chagrin of his wife Jane (Catherine McCormack, stuck in the thankless role of neglected wife) and their two surviving children, Jim throws himself into the role of spokesman for his fellow mourners. The attack is quickly attributed to the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine – General Command (PFLP-GC), but Jim continues to press the authorities with tougher questions. When and where did the bomb land on the plane? What security flaws made it possible to get there? Which regimes may have supported the extremist group in pursuing its goals?

Initially, Jim keeps the case in the headlines by staging provocative stunts, such as carrying a fake bomb through airport security, drawing attention to lax inspection protocols. (This scene is almost quaint to watch from the other side of the September 11 attacks, a misfortune that falls within the series’ 20-plus year span.) But once two suspects are identified and extradited from Libya at Jim’s personal request Strongman Muammar al-Gaddafi (Nabil Al Raee) enters “Lockerbie: A Search for Truth” into the neon-lit world of courtrooms, appeals and cataloging evidence.

“Lockerbie: A Search for Truth” has the paradoxical feeling of being both overlong and overly condensed. That Jim turns his grief into a quixotic search for certainty rather than moving on is as thematic as his wall stuffed with data and theories is a visual one. The most intriguing relationship in the series is not between Jim and his loved ones, but between the amateur detective and Abdelbaset al-Megrahi (Ardalan Esmaili), the would-be assassin who Jim believes was wrongfully convicted. (He even goes so far as to provocatively refer to Abdelbaset as the attack’s “271st victim.”) The series begins with a flashback to Jim and Abdelbaset’s first face-to-face meeting – but their relationship is a strange mix of unlikely empathy and understandable distrust largely on the last two episodes, even if individual scenes such as a sad final montage continue long after their impact.

If the goal of “Lockerbie: A Search for Truth” is to reduce the number of exchanges like Jim’s encounter with the young woman unfamiliar with his underlying trauma, that’s a qualified success. The series is a practical introduction to the basics of what happened and who was affected, especially now that the world’s attention has shifted elsewhere. But it’s also difficult to place Jim’s plight in a larger context. A conversation with his frequent collaborator, journalist Murray Guthrie (Sam Troughton), about the reasons for other countries’ anti-Western hostility feels out of place, although it’s important to acknowledge the topic. “Lockerbie: A Search for Truth” focuses on a man’s all-consuming emotions. There is no room for geopolitical concerns, even if there might be some.

All five episodes of Lockerbie: A Search for Truth are now streaming on Peacock.