I have just finished watching the second half of this drama – I watched the first forty minutes and was becoming overwhelmed by the continuous stream of emotion-filled almost-whispered sentences. However, my curiosity made me watch the second half, hoping for a development of the plot – which never came. It goes without saying that we all sympathise with victims of terror attacks wherever they occur, and I for one could not imagine the depth of the suffering of parents and loved ones – this sensation came through very effectively. This drama was very well cast, with some excellent acting, but let down by a weak plot. The fact that this tragedy somehow "just happened" is a typical media "half-of the story". There are reasons for most things in life, and this attack was no exception. By focusing only on the heart-breaking reaction of one family, the author of this drama has chosen to ignore the other side of the story – "why did it happen?" The programme would have been much more effective had it been longer and contained and compared a sub-plot of an equally-suffering family loss in the Middle East, North Africa or elsewhere in the world. It would be totally naïve to believe these attacks have no causes – surely a grieving relative would want to know why they are happening, but none of the characters seemed to care. Perhaps an entertaining piece of work for the Islamophobes of this world – with a clearly-identified Muslim perpetrator of the attack leaving viewers rightly angry with "Islamic terrorism", but hardly a balanced look at causes and effects of such attacks. I feel neither entertained nor informed. Come on, you intelligent authors and producers, stop pretending you can't see the dots - start joining them together and inform us the viewers in a more rounded way. Without stating what is obvious, even most politicians now recognise the roots of these terror attacks.
It was, by and large, a waste of superb acting and casting, in what could have been a much better ten-year memorial to those so sadly killed or injured.
