Traffik

The six-part BBC drama that inspired Steven Soderbergh's Oscar-winning TRAFFIC (2000) tells essentially the same story with different particulars. Where TRAFFIC focuses on cocaine traffic between Mexico and the United States, TRAFFIK follows a path from the opium fields of Pakistan to heroin dealers in Hamburg and junkies in London. And at five-and-a-half hours, the original series is so gripping you not only won't mind how long it is — you'll wish it were longer.

Jack Lithgow (Bill Paterson) has just been named Chairman of Britain's Drug Abuse Committee. The reflexively self-righteous Lithgow is ill-equipped to deal with a problem that's one big, gray quagm...