HOME VIDEO: THE 'TRAFFIK' BEFORE 'TRAFFIC'

With "Traffic" already on tape and DVD, now comes "Traffik," the
11-year-old British television production from which Steven Soderbergh's
film was adapted. On June 26 Acorn Media will release the six-hour
miniseries on cassette and disc, and from start to finish the complex and
riveting predecessor, shown on PBS in this country, takes no back seat to
its formidable American offspring.

First broadcast in 1990, "Traffik" explores the heroin trade from three
perspectives, altered somewhat for the Soderbergh film. A member of
Parliament (Bill Paterson) is England's drug czar, and like his American
counterpart in the movie (Michael Douglas), he has an addicted daughter
(Julia Ormond). In Germany, a prominent businessman (George Kukura) is
caught dealing, courting financial disaster for him and his resourceful,
lethal wife who takes over his drug operation (Lindsay Duncan, in the
Catherine Zeta- Jones role in "Traffic").

While the Soderbergh movie goes to Mexico to look at the trade through the
eyes of a policeman (Benicio Del Toro), "Traffik" journeys to Pakistan and
follows a forthright farmer named Fazal (Jamal Shah) as he sells poppies to
be ground into the heroin that makes fortunes for men like the Karachi drug
lord Tariq Butt (Talat Hussein).

"We wanted to look at the trade like it was the car business or something
and just take the emotion out of it," said Simon Moore, who wrote
"Traffik." The futility of the "war" on drugs has changed little in 11
years, he said, nor has media coverage: "Drugs are one of those things
television thinks it covers. We think we've seen a lot about it, the cops
and arrests."

In "Traffik" there is plenty of that, and no lack of emotion as highly
developed characters and their families teeter on the edge of disaster. But
the strength of the film lies in its gray shadings and moral ambiguities,
which present the drug trade in anything but black and white. The hero, in
fact, is Fazal, who first champions his fellow impoverished poppy farmers
and later goes to Karachi to work for Tariq Butt.

Mr. Moore wrote "Traffik," directed by Alastair Reid, in 13 months. There
are more than 200 speaking parts, many of them in German and Pakistani. "I
got a structure, and as we went ahead I researched it," Mr. Moore said.
"Most of the things that happen in `Traffik' came from newspaper articles.
I didn't have to create episodes. I wrote it first, then went back to
people in the agencies and asked them if it rang true or not."

It is a richly textured film, with many parts beautifully interwoven. There
is a great sense of depth. "That has something to do with not using
traditional points of view," Mr. Moore said. In standard films on the
subject, he added, "one of the disappointments is that you know who is good
and who is bad.

"There is no moral group in between," he said.

For his three stories, he wanted someone with political power, a dealer who
was a woman and not the stereotypical man with a ponytail. "Then I wanted
someone growing and making the stuff but not using it," he said. "It's our
problem, not theirs."