Thank goodness for the little chinks of light supplied by the likes of Channel 4. I don’t mind all this reality stuff because it’s good throwaway fun, you know? But this much of it? And Big Brother to come? We might as well just pack up the telly and throw it out of the window. So yes, thank goodness for things like Endgame, Channel 4′s latest entry in to the Big Serious Drama canon. The last First Look I did for a Channel 4 thing was the Red Riding trilogy, which certainly had its moments but wasn’t quite the landmark piece of work I’d hoped it would be. But Endgame? Now here’s something that might just stand up to any hype.

Related: Like the sound of Endgame? Why not read out news and reviews of the Red Riding trilogy here.

Channel 4 held a screening at BAFTA last night, so it was quite proper. It was nice. I like. In fact, there was a real sense of importance wafting about the place, not least because there was State Of Play screening on afterwards - Baroness Amos was there, John Reid was there, as was, erm, Paula Wilcox was there. South African High Commissioner, and ANC veteran, Lindiwe Mabuza was also in attendance. Legend.

Endgame started with a very nervous-looking Johnny Lee Miller travelling in the back of van through a South African township in the late 1980s, hiding under a blanket. Police brutality was everywhere (Mabuza revealed in the after-screening Q&A that the song sung by anti-apartheid protestors could be translated as “Botha out, Mandela in”). The driver, a black woman, seemed to trust him, but when she took him to a social club where dozens of black South Africans were holding court, her colleagues weren’t quite as charitable with their hospitality.

But who is this well-spoken Englishman in the midst of the chaos and carnage? What are his motives for risking life and limb? It turned out he was working for mining company Consolidated Gold, a firm whose mining interests in the ravaged country (under state of emergency) were in danger of coming to an end thanks to the deteriorating leadership of PW Botha and looming threat of civil war.

Lee Miller’s Michael Young, recognising that he had a company to save, set about setting up secret meets between the ANC’s Thabo Mbeki (Chiwetel Efiojor) and government representative, Professor Willie Esterhuyse, in England to try and get them talking and, ultimately, pave the way for formal negotiations between the government and the ANC (and the release of Mandela and the abolition of apartheid).

What unfolded reminded me of Frost/Nixon. Despite the turmoil in South Africa (of which we saw a lot of), the film was building up to each meeting, like rounds in a boxing match. Writer Paula Milne did a good job of focusing on the meetings, even though she could have given more screen time to Mandela’s story, and the turmoil in neighbouring African countries, like Zimbabwe.

Mbeki (who went on to succeed Mandela as South African president… in fact, the South African general election starts today) and Esterhuyse started the meetings as sworn enemies, but slowly started to find some common ground and even mutual respect. In the end there was a veritable bromance between the two as their collective risks in attending the meetings finally bore fruit. I don’t think I’m giving anything away here – everyone knows what happened to Mandela, the ANC and South Africa.

Throughout Endgame you’re aware of an underlying tension and a sense of what was at stake – there was tense music, there was snappy, innovative editing (don’t worry… not too jerky) and an intriguing, washed-out palette. Both main players, Hurt (accent, very good) and Efiojor, put in top-notch performances, and there were also strong performances from Timothy West (accent, bad cockney), Derek Jacobi, Lee Miller and Mark Strong (accent, fair to middling) as a sinister government agent.

I think this is getting a full DVD release, but for now this will do very nicely as a TV film. The greatest compliment I can pay it is that after watching it I wanted to find out more about Mbeki, about Esterhuyse, about the struggle to rid the country of apartheid and about Michael Young (who facilitated the whole thing, even though his motives were initially economic. He was in attendance at the screening too and received a huge round of applause). In fact, I came away asking myself why there hasn’t been any other TV dramas about South Africa and apartheid.

Look out for it in a few weeks’ time.