Talking to the enemy

The television producer is rarely fêted away from  TV industry circles but David Aukin of Daybreak Pictures has been so instrumental in creating some of the most memorable contemporary dramas on television in recent years that he warrants special attention.

His most satisfying work was concentrated on the Blair regime, with such satirical gems as The Trial Of Tony Blair (what if the Prime Minister was held to account over Iraq?) and A Very Social Secretary (about John Prescott’s pathetic shenanigans), together with more heavy-hitting projects such as The Government Inspector (about the death of David Kelly) and The Hamburg Cell (about the 9/11 bombers).

In each case, he produced dramas that made you think (and laugh) rather than make you wonder why you bothered turning on the television.

He’s now turned his focus to the end of apartheid in South Africa with an uplifting, moving and overwhelmingly hopeful film about arguably the driest subject in the world: diplomatic negotiations.

It’s called Endgame and shows, in a thriller format, how Britain played host to a series of delicately balanced talks held in a stately home near Bath between November 1987 and May 1990 involving former South African President Thabo Mbeki and Professor Willie Esterhuyse, a prominent Afrikaner academic at Stellenbosch University.

At the time, Mbeki was acting on behalf of a “terrorist organisation”, the African National Congress (ANC), while Nelson Mandela still languished in prison.

Aukin managed to assemble a brilliant cast, with Hollywood actor William Hurt in the lead as Esterhuyse, Jonny Lee Miller as Michael Young, the diffident Brit who brokered the talks, and Chiwetel Ejiofor as Mbeki. Sir Derek Jacobi and Timothy West co-star. The result is a film that will also get a cinema release in the United States.

The producer explains how the idea came from an unlikely source.

“I was having lunch with Greg Dyke [the former BBC director-general] one day and, as is inevitable, we ran out of conversation and he told me about Michael Young, the guy who organised these talks. I thought this was an extraordinary story. I had never come across it before.

“So I got in touch with Michael, who was a bit sceptical because I wanted to make a drama and previously people had suggested a documentary, which is natural, but no one was interested in a factual piece.

“Because the talks happened in England it gave me a reason to pitch it to British backers. I then showed it to the writer Paula Milne and we conceived it as a story of how two groups who loathe and detest each other can, under a set of circumstances, be brought into a room and learn to trust each other.

“It struck us that this was an extraordinary story with great relevance for what’s going on in the world at any given period of time.”

I ndeed, the film concludes with a caption describing how the former IRA is now apparently meeting with Hamas.

Says Aukin: “A few days ago there was a huge photo in the papers of two former IRA chaps walking through Israel with a couple of Hamas people. Well, what are they talking about? So when you see these unsolvable disputes, there is always a hope somewhere that people will come together and find their way through this morass.”

Remarkably, the script was shown to the most important figures in South Africa.

“We had access to the minutes of the meetings and Paula Milne and I travelled there two years ago and met President Mbeki, as he then was, and Esterhuyse, and the man who kept the minutes for the ANC. We checked out the story with them and they confirmed the accuracy of it.”

Single dramas, as productions like this are known, is a dying form on television.

Says Aukin: “Clearly, Channel 4 is hugely important, so threats to its funding are very serious for film-makers like myself. The quality from Channel 4 in drama is very high indeed given the resources available.

“The BBC obviously does wonderful work but less of the contemporary, political work.”

Would any of his films have appeared on the BBC?

“The BBC uses the expression that you can’t present drama that is partial but all drama is partial. As soon as a the writer takes a point of view, it’s partial but the question of those films appearing on the BBC? Well, no.”

What next? Gordon Brown? He must be a ripe target.

“It’s pathetic,” says Aukin.

“He goes from one public relations blunder to another. He patronised the entire Labour Party by going out on YouTube about expenses. I’m afraid, right now, that Gordon Brown is beyond satire.”

Endgame, Channel 4, tomorrow, 9pm.