It’s time for the Calgary summit and Tom sets off on his own with some words of love and encouragement from his wife: “Go off and save the world Tom, but you’re doing it on your own.” With support like that from your nearest and dearest it’s amazing any global environmental problems ever get solved. Oh. Yeah.

The second and final instalment of this ecological thriller crammed several heaps of steaming intrigue and dirty deals into its 90 minutes, along with some very glossy and well orchestrated climate change summit scenes. I’ve never seen so much bracketing. Not to mention brush bys.

The USA was dragged to the edge of a deal at the Kyoto 2 talks after their own insurance industry threatened to withdraw their investments in the coal, oil and gas industries. Faced with $200b bills for the Katrina disaster and with the expectation of more to come, they’d finally cottoned on to the fact that they are actively helping to bankrupt themselves by giving money to the very industries causing global warming. All this was swallowed by everyone from the treasury minister downwards, until it reached Mack, who pointed out that investment ran two ways, and if the fossil fuel consortium threatened to remove themselves from the insurance business there would be “a hole in your pension portfolio you’ll be able to see from outer space.”

And with that threat, the deal is off. Dirty tricks. Back scratching alternating with back stabbing. A tiny insight into the ways the world’s dealers and shakers carve everything up between themselves and hang the rest of the planet out to dry.

But there’s a problem. The data Masud has been carrying around in his ever-grubbier shirt pocket shows the Saudis have been lying about how much oil there is under the Western Desert. As in: not much. A few hundred billion barrels less than the world expects. Mack tries to spin this away to prevent global panic, but no amount of marketing can put the oil back under the ground.

When wheels spin within wheels it can take a while before all the cogs are aligned. Following a “brush-by” from the Chinese delegation, Tom and Philip realise they have the bones of a deal there, owing to China’s recent experiences with drought and famine. Kyoto 2 would help them alleviate their environmental problems in the long term, while allowing them to trade their carbon emissions from their new power stations for significant short-term financial gain too.

While this deal is being brokered, Holly is trying to set one up all by herself. To bury the Saudi data in exchange for the USA signature on the treaty. Inexperienced in dealing at this level, she approaches Mack, who doesn’t believe her. It’s her last act. Killed to ensure her silence and with Masud out of the picture too, Mack’s puppet masters, to his horror, turn their attentions on Tom – the last remaining maverick who has access to the data. In a complex triple-bluff, Mack convinces Tom his only way out is to hand over the data and let Mack get it out of the building. Tom’s trust is repayed, the data is passed to Philip and published, causing widespread panic in the oil market and a wholesale movement of the world’s population back to travelling on foot.

A brilliantly conceived and crafted story, executed to perfection by its leads, this three-hour drama delivered a convincing portrayal of the best and worst of humanity, and how the future of the world can hinge on the actions of two men and whether or not they trust each other. Crammed full of evocative camera work and snappy dialogue, the story reeled past so quickly in places that it stands rewatching to pick up some of the subtler nuances, but overall the impression was of an all-too-believable scenario of the world sleepwalking to the edge of a precipice. I guess we just all have to hope the right two men will be standing on that rooftop when the real world scenario catches up with the fiction.