At 10.31pm on Monday 22 May 2017, Salman Ramadan Abedi, a British-born Islamist extremist blew himself up at the conclusion of an Ariana Grande concert at Manchester Arena. He murdered 22 people and injured more than 1,000, many seriously. Worlds Collide: The Manchester Bombing (ITV) is an attempt to understand why it happened, whether it could have been prevented, and whether it might happen again. Why, in other words, the world of fun-loving, apolitical, rather sweet Ariana Grande fans ended up colliding with the death-cult world of Abedi, who was brought up in Manchester and around the same age as them. They were obsessed with Ariana’s new album Dangerous Woman, fashion and friends; Abedi was obsessed with Islamic State, the Koran and just how many nuts and bolts he could pack into a homemade bomb in a large rucksack. (The answer is a lot: it is grimly comical to see Abedi on CCTV staggering around the Arena bent nearly double as he went about his evil mission, such was the sheer weight of his cargo of shrapnel.)
Despite the calm, conscientious efforts of the documentary makers to explain what happened, and what might not have happened, they are only partly successful. The extensive CCTV footage, eyewitness accounts and footage from the public inquiry tell us much about what happened that night, and what led up to it – but, frustratingly, less about why.
