It was shown as part of the BBC's "Aftershock" season, a selection of programmes marking the first anniversary of the collapse of the American investment bank Lehman Brothers.
By Friday evening, Bank of America begins stalling the deal, noting that Lehman's valuation puts them "underwater" by billions of dollars.
Retaining hopes that Bank of America will change its mind, Fuld secretly orders the firm's attorney Harvey R. Miller (Richard Durden) to begin drafting a bankruptcy petition.
Successive bankers repackage and grade the securities, and actively trade them at enormous profit, but devote little attention to whether the homeowners themselves can pay their mortgages.
As Thain leaves, he learns from Paulson of the Fed's plans to bail out AIG, whose credit default swaps insure half of the western world's banking system.
Under British law, Barclays cannot guarantee Lehman's debts until its own shareholders vote on the matter, and that will not happen until Tuesday – beyond the Monday morning deadline.
The production is a work of fiction based on the real events that took place; the story was put together after watching interviews and with off-the-record chats with well-placed sources.
[1] It was written by Craig Warner (writer of Maxwell and The Queen's Sister), directed by Michael Samuels (Caught in a Trap, The Curse of Steptoe) and produced by Lisa Osborne (Little Dorrit).
Warner told ABCNews.com that he tried to make the film "fun and comprehensible" because "a bunch of white guys sitting around in suits talking about money isn't very interesting."
[2] Osborne said that the production was about much more than just finance: It was a disaster movie, it was Apollo 13 with the titans of Wall Street racing the clock to save the stricken bank; it was a Greek tragedy with Lehman's chief executive brought down by his own tragic flaw; it was Twelve Angry Men with solutions sought in smoke-filled rooms.
[1][3] Overnight figures indicated that the production gained 1 million viewers, a 5% audience share, behind England's 2010 FIFA World Cup qualifier on ITV1, Motorway Cops on BBC One and Ramsay's Kitchen Nightmares USA on Channel 4.
[4] Robert Epstein of The Independent on Sunday said it was "all very fast-moving" and that "ultimately, it was hard not to be bored by what was one of the most important – and dramatic – events of the past year.
[6] Tim Teeman of The Times said that "some vivid performances transcended the baffling material"[7] and John Preston of The Daily Telegraph said: If I hadn't read beforehand about how Last Days had been written and shot in a tremendous hurry, I think I might have guessed.
Craig Warner's script consistently aimed high, with his boardroom exchanges being especially good: the chippy competitiveness and testosterone surges slowly subsiding into stunned disbelief.