Five Netflix shows to watch if you loved ‘The Bombing of Pan Am 103’
The Bombing of Pan Am 103, which premiered in the UK last year on BBC One, was recently made available to a larger audience with its latest Netflix release. And the intense post-viewing discussions, jam-packed streaming traffic, and hard-to-miss media coverage already speak for themselves.
The BBC and Netflix limited series recounts the horrific 1988 Lockerbie disaster when a transatlantic flight carrying 243 passengers and 16 crew members exploded over the small Scottish town, killing everyone aboard, alongside 11 civilians on the ground who were struck by the falling debris.
The primary plot dramatises the massive cross-border investigation into what’s largely deemed the deadliest act of terrorism on British soil, serving as a gripping watch that most viewers seem to prefer to finish in one sitting.
So, if you’re someone similar who completed the series before curiosity could take over, here are five Netflix shows to watch after The Bombing of Pan Am 103.
Five Netflix shows to stream after The Bombing of Pan Am 103:
IC 814: The Kandahar Hijack (Anubhav Sinha, 2024)
If you haven’t watched IC 814: The Kandahar Hijack yet, it is arguably the closest follow-up to The Bombing of Pan Am 103 available on Netflix. The limited series dramatises the real-life 1999 hijacking of Indian Airlines Flight 814, carrying passengers on Christmas Eve, travelling from Kathmandu, Nepal, to Delhi, India, where five dangerous terrorists took control of the aircraft shortly after take-off, demanding the release of three high-profile prisoners.
The plane was forced to make stops in Amritsar in India, Lahore in Pakistan, and Dubai in the UAE before a tense week-long hostage crisis in Taliban-controlled Kandahar. Similar to The Bombing of Pan Am 103, IC 814: The Kandahar Hijack distinctly portray the claustrophobic terror inside the aircraft cockpit and the frantic, high-stakes political manoeuvring on the ground, largely focusing on the crisis management group working day and night.
American Manhunt: The Boston Marathon Bombing (Floyd Russ, 2023)
The most appealing aspects of The Bombing of Pan Am 103 are undoubtedly the real-life historical grounding and, of course, the relentless multi-agency manhunt that followed. So, if you want your next Netflix pick to convey some of that, American Manhunt: The Boston Marathon Bombing is an important watch. The three-part docuseries examines the scarring 2013 terrorist attack in the US where two pressure-cooker bombs blasted near the finishing line of the 117th Boston Marathon.
The attack resulted in three deaths, with over 260 left severely injured. American Manhunt: The Boston Marathon Bombing breaks down the minute-by-minute hunt for the Tsarnaev brothers, featuring archive footage and firsthand accounts from law enforcement officials, federal investigators and local leaders who lived through the tense 100-hour manhunt that led to the lockdown of eastern Massachusetts.
The Hijacking of Flight 601 (CS Prince and Pablo Gonzales, 2024)
Another Netflix exclusive follow-up to catch up on after The Bombing of Pan Am 103 is The Hijacking of Flight 601, co-created by CS Prince and Pablo Gonzales. If the aviation disaster and high-stakes crisis elements of the limited series had you hooked, you cannot skip out on this intense Spanish-language thriller based on the true events of Latin America’s longest airborne hijacking in 1973, where two dangerous, armed, masked men seized control of the commercial plane.
They claim affiliation with a rebel group, placing a demand of $200,000 in cash, alongside the highly debatable release of dozens of political prisoners. But when the government declines to meet every demand, resulting in a prolonged airborne journey looping across Latin America, The Hijacking of Flight 601 captures how the crew tries to outwit them as pressure mounts on the captain, co-pilots, and flight attendants.
Criminal: UK (Jim Field Smith, 2019-2020)
If your favourite parts of The Bombing of Pan Am 103 are the tense, psychological interrogations and the slow extraction of truth, Criminal: UK on Netflix might come across as unexpectedly rewarding. The police procedural anthology series features a straightforward, real-time plot structure in which each standalone episode focuses on a high-stakes, cerebrally stimulating interrogation between a group of detectives and a single suspect.
Criminal: UK takes place strictly within the confines of a police interrogation room, leaving no scope for distraction for spectators. In short, the show is a gripping, stripped-down, masterfully acted, unfiltered showcase of the routine battle of wits that unfolds between high-profile sleuths and suspects, relying on extensive dialogue, behavioural micro-expressions and pressure tactics rather than physical action.
Mindhunter (David Fincher, 2017-2019)
Again, if you loved the meticulous, slow-burning FBI investigative work in Pan Am 103, you cannot skip Mindhunter! Set in the late 1970s and early 1980s, the acclaimed psychological thriller tracks the dawn of the FBI’s behavioural science unit as agents interview incarcerated serial killers to understand their cognitive workings, specifically how they think, focusing heavily on the cerebral toll the work takes on investigators.
Mindhunter revisits the birth of modern criminal profiling, telling the story of FBI agents Holden Ford and Bill Tench who join forces with psychologist Wendy Carr as they interview imprisoned serial killers to make sense of their thought process and apply those insights to active cases. The series follows the agents as they travel across the United States to converse with notorious murderers, distancing themselves from traditional investigation to reason with psychology.