The tedium of the negotiating table stifles a drama about the end of apartheid

Of all the thriller’s many conventions, surely the most affected is also the least dramatic: I mean the way that, when the protagonists call one another on the telephone, they never say hello, or goodbye, and nor do they introduce themselves.

Every character knows every other character simply by dint of the sound of their voice, even if they have only met once before, for five seconds in a dark corridor. If I were ever to find myself caught up in some le Carré-like scenario – unlikely, I know, but as a hack I live in hope – I would get into trouble pretty quickly, either through sheer muddle (mistaking my friend for my foe, or vice versa), or by revealing the identity of my callers to the people tapping my telephone. “Ah, Mr Terrorist,” I would say, chummily. “How are you?” Meanwhile, those nice folk at MI6 would stamp “Case closed” on the file and head for the pub.

If I tell you that I found myself thinking all this while I was watching Endgame, Channel 4’s film about the secret negotiations that led to the release from prison of Nelson Mandela and, in the fullness of time, the end of apartheid, it will probably give you some idea of its major flaw: yes, there were a few longueurs.

Talking, even if you are talking about very big and important things, is extremely hard to do on television. Paula Milne, who wrote Endgame, tried her utmost to inject tension into proceedings.

In the middle of one of these talks, Professor Willie Esterhuyse (William Hurt) wandered out of the stately home where they were taking place and into a nearby field, where an elegant Arabian horse was grazing. As he approached it, a gun fired and the nag bolted. I suddenly came to. Was this an assassination attempt? In Somerset?

No, it was just some farmer.

In the end, however, Milne could never really escape the tedious shine of the mahogany negotiating table, a place where even the best of men and women must occasionally find themselves suppressing a yawn.

I do feel mean about pointing this out. Endgame had a lot in its favour, not least the entirely astonishing fact that it was a corporate communications man – a PR, in other words – who put the show on the road.

In 1985, Michael Young (Jonny Lee Miller), who was working for Consolidated Goldfields, a British company with South African interests, had the foresight to see that his business’s hope of P W Botha’s government struggling on just a little longer while Consolidated continued to make money was madness (not to mention repellent).

He set about getting the ANC and leading members of the Afrikaans community, Esterhuyse among them, around the table. And to think that PR has a bad name!

Then, there was the cast. With the exception of Timothy West, who played P W Botha as if he was an alderman from Burnley, and who could not quite hang on to his South African accent for more than 30 seconds at a time, this was a film crammed with lovely performances.

Chiwetel Ejiofor played Thabo Mbeki so beautifully that I almost forgot how much I loathe the man these days, but Hurt was also a star turn – faced with Mbeki for the first time, you could literally see the bile rising in him: it was something about the way he clenched his lips – and so was Mark Strong, who played the head of South African intelligence, Dr Neil Barnard. In the right light Strong’s sharp features made him seem as menacing as a knife. When he broke the filter off his cigarettes, it was as though he were snapping a limb.

Clarke Peters, late of The Wire, did a neat impression of Nelson Mandela, and watching him reminded you all over again of the man’s almost unique place in global politics: he really wasn’t in it only for himself.

When the authorities moved him from cell to bungalow, the better to isolate him from his comrades, they also gave him a swimming pool. In Endgame, he looked longingly at the glittering water, but did he smile? Did he dive in?

He did not. Peters’s mouth remained a mournful straight line: incorruptible, indomitable.

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