A heinous crime, the vast investigation undertaken to solve it and the elusive pursuit of “justice” makes for an enrossing but sprawling and ungainly mini-series in “The Bombing of Pan Am 103.”

Writer-and-series-creator Jonathan Lee’s second crack at this material — he wrote a “Lockerbie: The Bombing of Pan Am 103” documentary — juggles many points of view, constructs a few composite characters and unravels the complex story of how those working the case solved it and took it to court over the course of a dozen years.

It’s a lot to take in. No doubt working on the doc helped him organize this material and find his “characters.” And even if the final episode, the trial and its trials, isn’t the most satisfying “Law & Order” wrapped up in a bow, it’s rewarding viewing and a vivid if non-judgemental-to-a-fault history lesson.

Lee plays up the conflict between the Scottish police, in the persons of a chief inspector played by the great Peter Cullan and a dedicated family-man detective played by Connor Swindells, and the FBI, personified by an ambitious careerist played by Patrick J. Adams.

They’re often bickering, as Scotland was the “jurisdiction” where the crime — a bomb blew up a Boeing 747 at 31000 feet — took place. The FBI played turf wars as it played catchup, since 190 Americans — many of them college students flying home for Christmas of 1988 — were the victims.

And the CIA section chief on the case (Terrance Maynard) slows down the works and irks one and all by stalling on doling out leads and names, as leads started pointing to state sponsored terrorism with Libyan fingerprints all over it.

The series receates the hellish night when flaming airplane parts, bodies and luggage tumbled out of the sky onto tiny Lockerbie, Scotland, killing some on the ground and leaving survivors in shock. It plays up the shoe leather work of locating evidence on the ground, detecting and intereviewing, the forensics needed to piece together clues from an 850 square mile crime scene.

And as it focuses on the policing and police politics, it takes time to acknowledge the victims’ families, who didn’t accept the FBI’s secrecy and made a stink about how callously they were treated — by the FBI.

The Scots are depicted as much more compassionate, from the police on the job to the locals, personofied by Phyllis Logan (“Downton Abbey”) as a Lockerbie lady who lectured the cops on the human tragedy and what she thought the families — in town and flying in from 21 different countries — needed and deserved.

Merritt Wever (“Nurse Jackie”) is a drawling Senate aide who rides the Feds to be more resepectful of the grieving relatives or face their wrath.

In a series this populous, dropping a few famous faces and reasonably famous names into the mix helps to keep things straight. Well, somewhat.

The formidable Cullan gives us a Scots chief inspector Orr who won’t tolerate having this case poached from him or slacking from his subordinates. “Evidence first, ‘theories’ later,” he barks. And they listen.

Tony Curran plays the one no-nonense subordinate as intimidating as Cullan’s Orr.

Popular character actor Eddie Marsan tries on a Southern Drawl as the FBI’s go-to bomb expert, and makes a sharp impression.

Dominik Tiefenthaler stands out as a dopey Swiss tech nerd whom no one takes seriously until it turns out his company provided electronics used in the bomb.

The sprawl of it all works against the story’s sense of urgency. This could have made a tight, immersive feature film, perhaps ending before the trial of those eventually accused of murder took place.

But the Pan Am bombing saga doesn’t lend itself to that, if you’re trying to relate an unfailingly accurate account. Little dollops of sentiment sometimes land and at other times don’t play and drag. The geopolitics of the day, with Reagan’s blundering, Thatcher’s efforts to show humanity after the tragedy and plenty of “blame” for all of this to go around, are barely mentioned.

Swiss complicity, the Maltese connection, German and FBI and CIA blundering, airline security lapses, it’s all there in tiny doses, with the stoic Scots persevering even as their justice system seems unready for its close-up.

Lee never lets this lapse into Movie of the Week sentimentality. But pulling together all this material, all these people, all those intrigues, tit-for-tat politics and a press corps that’s dismissed early on and the victims themselves — barely introduced — proves daunting in all but the “just the facts, ma’am” sense.

The story is told and the facts are nailed down. But the reality of this monstrous crime is that “gotcha” moments didn’t figure in the police work, big busts were off the table and a lot of dramatic potential is lost by “sticking to the facts.” And that’s before the convoluted finale that can’t help but feel anticlimactic.

Rating: TV-MA, profanity

Cast: Connor Swindells, Patrick J. Adams, Phyllis Logan, Merritt Wever, Tony Curran, Peter Cullan and Eddie Marsan

Credits: Created by Jonathan Lee. A Netflix release.

Running time: six episodes @ :60 munutes each