Barnes & Noble

Like director Steven Soderbergh's Traffic -- the Academy Award-winning feature film it inspired -- the 1989 British miniseries Traffik is a prism-like tale of agony, betrayal, and desperation that refracts the various stages in the illicit drug trade into a stunning panorama. This extraordinarily matter-of-fact view of the heroin-trafficking business spans two continents and three countries -- Pakistan, Germany, and England, with Jack Lithgow (Bill Paterson) at the heart of the dramatic ensemble. Lithgow, a British government minister sent to Pakistan to observe and recommend ways to combat that country's heroin problem, makes the acquaintance of Fazal (Jamal Shah), an impoverished Pakistani poppy farmer; and Karl (George Kukura), a prosperous German trafficker. On the other end of this heroin food chain is Lithgow's daughter Caroline, portrayed by Julia Ormond, who shows striking grit in her first major role. Also outstanding is Lindsay Duncan as Karl's glitzy wife, Helen, who basks in the prosperity resulting from her husband's criminality. The nearly five-and-a-half-hour miniseries offers a quiet critique of the loud, brash, power-driven trafficking business, provoking thought and emotion. As with director Soderbergh's adaptation, spellbound viewers of Traffik will likely find themselves feeling empathy for these richly drawn characters. Patricia Kim O'Cone

All Movie Guide

This four-hour, six-episode British miniseries, broadcast on Channel 4 in 1989 and in America on PBS's Masterpiece Theatre in 1990, provided the basis for Traffic, Steven Soderbergh's 2000 Oscar winner. Though Soderbergh and screenwriter Stephen Gaghan borrowed much of their plot and structure from the original, Traffik focuses on the European drug trade instead of the American one and utilizes England, Germany, and Pakistan as its major settings. One of the three primary plot strands involves Jack Lithgow (Bill Paterson), a member of the British Parliament, who discovers that his daughter, Caroline (Julia Ormond), is a heroin addict despite the fact that he leads the country's Drug Abuse Committee. In a parallel story line, Helen Rosshalde (Lindsay Duncan), the British wife of German drug smuggler Karl Rosshalde (George Kukura), must take over her husband's illegal operations after an associate turns state's evidence and Karl goes on trial. In the third interwoven segment, and the one that diverges the farthest from the plot of the American film, Pakistani poppy farmer Fazel (Jamal Shah) ingratiates himself to drug overlord Tariq Butt (Talat Hussain) in order to support his family after the Pakistani government, at the insistence of Lithgow and other British officials, cracks down on the subsistence-level farmers who supply the heroin trade with its raw materials. Brian J. Dillard

Entertainment Weekly

The original is better. It's a curmudgeonly statement -- cranky and almost cliché -- but in the case of the 1989 British miniseries that spawned Steven Soderbergh's Traffic, it happens to be true. Daniel Fierman

Product Details

• UPC: 054961821990
• Source: ACORN MEDIA
• Aspect Ratio: Pre-1954 Standard (1.33.1)
• Sound: Dolby Digital Stereo
• Language: English
• Time: 5:05:00
• Sales Rank: 10,219

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