The sweeping PBS "Masterpiece Theatre" production of "Traffik"may be the best drug thriller since "The French Connection."
Airing from 9 to 11 p.m. Sunday over WTTW-Channel 11, thencontinuing from 9 to 10 p.m. the next four Sundays, "Traffik" delves into the dirty and dangerous international drug trade - fromthe poppy fields of Pakistan to the smugglers' backwaters of Hamburg,to the high councils of the British government.
A complex, involving drama, "Traffik" really is three separatestories rolled into one.
Jack Lithgow (Bill Paterson) is a British Home Office secretarycharged with formulating Britain's drug enforcement policy.Relatively naive about the production and importation of heroin,Lithgow travels to Pakistan to learn more about the growth of poppiesfrom which the drug is derived.
Initially impressed with Pakistani efforts to curb the growth ofthe poppy, Lithgow returns to England to formulate an aid package tohelp the Pakistani government.
Meanwhile, back in Pakistan, Fazal (Jamal Shah), a peasantfarmer who relies on his poppy crop to support his family, is forcedto travel to impoverished Karachi when his fields are destroyed bythe government. Unable to find work, he eventually enters the employof Tariq Butt (Talet Hussain), the psychotic drug lord of the countryand seemingly the only man capable of providing a decent living to alucky few.
One of Butt's major distributors is wealthy German businessmanKarl Rosshalde (George Kukura), whose veneer of respectability isshattered when his near-perfect drug smuggling operation stumbles andhe is arrested.
With Rosshalde in prison awaiting trial, the drug empire beginsto crumble until his wife, Helen (Lindsay Duncan), decides to takeover her husband's business.
And lastly, while Minister Lithgow becomes obsessed with thedetails of the government's anti-drug policy, he is oblivious to theaddiction of his daughter, Caroline (Julia Osmond), to the very drughe is trying to battle.
"Traffik" is unlike anything ever presented by "MasterpieceTheatre." This is a contemporary story capturing the brutality ofthe drug trade - its oppression of peasants in Pakistan, the violencesurrounding the efforts made by Helen Rosshalde to silence anyone whothreatens her, and the unrelenting savagery of the daily life of aheroin addict.
Although "Traffik" tends at times to resort to proselytizing atthe expense of dramatic development, this production nevertheless isa top-notch political/action/adventure thriller.
At the same time, this mini-series endeavors to explore theeconomic aspects at the source of the drug chain in Pakistan, wherepeasants are told to grow something other than poppies, but are givenno resources - or incentives - to cultivate another crop.
Simon Moore's richly moving script and Alastair Reid'seven-handed direction, together with a host of superb performancesall around, combine to make "Traffik" a highly evocative study ofgreed, honor and survival.
Jamal Shah delivers a splendid performance as the forlorn Fazal,who finds himself entrapped by Tariq Butt's high-stakes orbit ofaffluence and violence at a cost to his family he can never repay.
Talat Hussain's Tariq Butt is the slimiest heavy to hittelevision in some time.
Paterson is riveting as the beleaguered Lithgow who, every timehe thinks he has done the right thing, discovers he has buriedhimself deeper in a political morass and hypocrisy of his own making.
And in what is the hallmark of so much imported British televi sion, even modest supporting performances shine. Tilo Pruckne andFritz Muller-Scherz are terrific as cynical Hamburg vice cops whobattle Helen Rosshalde's efforts to expand her imprisoned husband'sdrug empire.
"Traffik," like "The French Connection," is a no-holds-barredlook at the vulnerability of society to resist the onslaught ofdrugs, told with passion and poignancy.
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