Traffik

Traffik is a 1989 British television serial about the illegal drug trade. Its three stories are interwoven, with arcs told from the perspectives of Pakistani growers and manufacturers, German dealers, and British users.

Traffik was nominated for six BAFTA Awards, winning three. It also won an International Emmy Award for best drama.^[1]

The 2000 crime drama film Traffic, directed by Steven Soderbergh, was based on this television serial. In turn, the 2004 American television miniseries Traffic was based on both the original Traffik television serial and the film Traffic.

Background

The six-part series was produced by Britain's Channel 4, written by Simon Moore, and directed by Alastair Reid. In the United States it was first aired on Masterpiece Theatre in 1990.

The film starred:

• Bill Paterson as Jack Lithgow, the father of a heroin addict, whose job is as a Home Office minister in the UK government with responsibilities for combating drug use and importation.
• Julia Ormond as his addicted daughter.
• George Kukura as Karl Rosshalde, a German drug smuggler.
• Lindsay Duncan as Rosshalde's wife, whose life is changed forever after her husband's arrest.
• Fritz Müller-Scherz and Tilo Prückner as the German detectives aiming to bring down Rosshalde with the help of informer Jacques Ledesert (Peter Lakenmacher)
• Jamal Shah as naive opium poppy grower Fazal, who is evicted from his land thanks to the policies encouraged by Lithgow's government, and as a result seeks a new job (and inevitably gets involved in corruption) in Karachi
• Talat Hussain as Pakistani drug lord Tariq Butt, the supplier of Rosshalde's European heroin network, who hires Shah.

References

External links

• Traffik at the Internet Movie Database

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