Always, when a terrorist atrocity takes place, the questions are the same: how could this have happened? Could it have been prevented? The fact that we rarely get satisfactory answers does not stop us wondering.
Footage from the inquiry into the attack outside an Ariana Grande concert in 2017, which heard its final submissions in March, provides many of the most arresting moments in Worlds Collide: The Manchester Bombing (ITV), a new two-part investigation. The actual inquiry spent 18 months sifting evidence; now, we at home have a couple of hours to come to our own personal ruling on whether the police and security services ought to have stopped Salman Abedi detonating a shrapnel bomb that killed him and 22 others. Whether or not this is a worthwhile pursuit is debatable, because even a well-made and intentioned documentary like this ends up feeling like a confusing spray of partial information.
