TV'S 'TRAFFIC' PRETTY HEAVY

NEW YORK - Traffic is proving to be one of the most durable entertainment
formulas of our time.

In the beginning there was Traffik, the 1989 British TV drama that tracked
the passage of heroin and the lives it ruined along the way, from
Pakistan's poppy fields to Britain's ruling classes. Then came 2000's
Traffic, Steven Soderbergh's big-screen version, which transplanted the
action to the United States and Mexico and collected four Oscars.

Now cable's USA Network offers yet another update, a miniseries also called
Traffic, which takes us to post-Sept. 11 Afghanistan and Seattle and adds
new levels of human wickedness: terrorism and trafficking in illegal
immigrants. Despite being a retread of a retread, it works pretty well.

Like its predecessors, the version airing in two-hour chapters Monday
through Wednesday (7 p.m.) depends on its ability to weave together
disparate lives and cultures: the lawlessness of Afghanistan and the
comforts of suburban Seattle; the glistening Seattle skyline and its
drug-addled derelicts; a bankrupt garment factory and a moneymaking
immigrant-smuggling business; a Chechen-immigrant cabdriver building his
own American dream; a teen romance with the girl next door.

All are tied together by drugs, the traffic in immigrants, and worse.

Story line 1: Mike McKay (Elias Koteas) is a Drug Enforcement
Administration agent. He's working to dismantle drug operations in
Afghanistan while his wife, Carole (Mary McCormack), and teenage son,
Tyler, are settling into a new home.

Story line 2: Adam Kadyrov (Cliff Curtis) plies the streets of Seattle in
his battered cab. He's anxiously waiting for his wife and daughter to
arrive in a containerload of immigrants.

Story line 3: Ivy League business graduate Ben Edmonds (Balthazar Getty
looking rather like Charlie Sheen in Wall Street) is getting desperate for
the good life. But his big real estate venture and his father's garment
business are sliding into bankruptcy.

Bodies start surfacing in Puget Sound with bullet wounds in their necks -
Kadyrov's wife and child among them. The DEA's McKay embarks on mysterious
business of his own, raising suspicions back at headquarters that he's
"jumped the rails." And Edmonds succumbs to his greed and becomes ensnared
in the immigrant business.

Now, here's the problem: How many times can you recycle the same themes
(that drugs kill the innocent, that we're all vulnerable and that the war
on drugs - surprise, surprise - is futile)? These ideas felt new when
Traffik first aired. Two versions later, they might be considered a bit
stale, but they're still powerful enough to keep the viewer on edge.

What made the original Traffik so convincing was its cast of largely
unknown actors. The star-studded Soderbergh version couldn't possibly match
its authentic feel. In this regard, at least, the new Traffic does better.

Koteas as loose cannon McKay and Martin Donovan as his by-the-book partner
breathe crackling life into an otherwise off-the-shelf cop pairing. Getty
as the young hustler, McCormack as the stressed-out DEA wife and Nelson Lee
as the sinister immigrant-smuggler are persuasive. Justin Chatwin and
Jennifer Rae Westley make a watchable, poignant teen couple.

Although the edifice of interwoven story lines seems to weaken somewhat
near the end, the two central mysteries - McKay's one-man mission and those
bodies in Puget Sound - sustain themselves to a satisfying resolution.

And be warned: The violence and the corpses are graphic.

The previous versions of this story were brave enough not to preach or
contrive happy endings. They left us with no doubt that all the bad things
that have happened will happen again and that the best we can hope for is
to slow their advance. To its credit, this Traffic also refuses to
force-feed us with easy answers.

Note photo caption: Elias Koteas plays a Drug Enforcement Administration
agent battling drug operations in Afghanistan in the USA Network series
Traffic.