Traffik is a six-part British TV series that was first broadcast on Channel 4 in the early summer of 1989. I can actually remember watching fragments of it and admiring the young actress that played the daughter of the main character who was a British MP. Back then I was finishing school and preparing for university, and little did I know that the actress in question was called Julia Ormond...

The Story

Without all the adverts Traffik lasts a chunky four and a half hours. It basically tells three different stories and moves back and forwards between them.

The series opens with a meeting in Hamburg where two cops are undercover and trying to buy drugs. They capture one of the traffikers who promises to testify against a German businessman. When he is arrested his English wife goes to desperate measures to keep her high quality of life.

Another story follows a poor Pakistani farmer as he trys to support his family. He ends up working for a Really Nasty Drug Lord.

And the third story is about British Member of Parliament, Jack Ludlow. He is a government minister who's fighting the production and traffiking of drugs into the UK. When he returns from Pakistan he discovers his Cambridge student daughter is on heroin.

The Verdict

Traffik is an excellent series. The quality of the recording wasn't great because it's a long-play copy of a copy, but that didn't spoil my enjoyment. I would put the tape in the machine intending to watch maybe 30 minutes, and I would end up watching over an hour. It must have cost a fortune to make as the locations include England, Germany and Pakistan. The cast are uniformly excellent.

Julia's character is just part of one third of the story, but there is a good chunk of her in it and she does a great job as the addict. (When not shooting up she looks a lot like she did in Captives, except of couse she was just a young thing in her early-20s.)

How to see it

Traffik was released in America on VHS. No doubt it's deleted now but keep you eyes open. In the future Channel 4 will be starting some new digital TV channels in the UK so I'll be watching the listings carefully, just in case. And it may be worth writing to Channel 4 to ask for a repeat...

The re-make

You may well have heard about a new US movie in production called "Traffik". It's based on the series but will probably just focus on an American father who discovers his American daughter is on drugs. Harrison Ford was connected to the role but dropped out. I think the Zeta will be in it. I doubt it will be as gritty as the series.

"Home Run"

If you want a feel for the series and are unable to watch it then I recomend the novel "Home Run" by Gerald Seymour which tells a similar story. (It's called "The Running Target" in the USA.) It also came out in 1989 and early in the book the daughter of a British government minister overdoses on heroin. As a result strings are pulled and a Customs unit is put on the job of tracking down the source of the drugs. For what's it's worth Seymour is one of my favorite authors.