An Oscar-Winning Crime Thriller Is Based On An Underrated British Series

Steven Soderbergh's film "Traffic" broke new ground upon its release in 2000. The film was a triptych of interlocking storylines that explored the War on Drugs in both the U.S. Starring Michael Douglas as a newly minted drug czar leading the battle against the Mexican drug cartels, Benicio Del Toro as a Mexican police officer battling corruption within his own ranks, while in San Diego, Don Cheadle and Luis Guzmán arrest the drug lord husband of Catherine Zeta-Jones.

The stories build off each other, painting a portrait of a dysfunctional war that hardly, if ever, accomplishes its goals. Critics hailed the film for its nuanced depiction of a real-world issue that Hollywood usually renders in unrealistic black and white morality, but few audiences knew that Soderbergh's story was based on an underrated British miniseries with the same name (but different spelling): "Traffik."

"Traffik" debuted on the U.K.'s Channel 4 in 1989. Like Soderbergh's "Traffic," the series follows three interwoven stories about the illegal drug trade in the U.K. The first of the three is the most similar to Soderbergh's "Traffic," with Bill Paterson playing a Scottish home minister tasked with blocking heroin imports from Pakistan, while unbeknown to him, his daughter is struggling with her own addiction. But the series' two other storylines are different and specific to the U.K. There is the story of Fazal (Jamal Shah), an opium grower whose home is taken away from him by the British government, and Karl Rosshalde (Juraj Kukura), a German drug smuggler trying to stay one step ahead of the German police.

The series was lauded for going out of its way to humanize the poppy growers victimized by the British government. It won the International Emmy Award for best drama, plus four BAFTAs.

"Traffic" got even more rapturous praise than its source material, winning Oscars for Benicio Del Toro, its writer Stephen Gaghan, and editing. It also netted Soderbergh a nomination for best director, which he lost to ... Steven Soderbergh for "Erin Brockovich."

Taking the structure of the TV series and adapting it to film was a difficult process, considering Soderbergh had about one-third the amount of screen time compared to the six episode miniseries. To help audiences keep up with the interlocking stories, Soderbergh used a unique form of color grading to give each storyline its own distinct color. The San Diego scenes were in green, the D.C. scenes in blue, and most influentially (for better and for worse), the Mexican scenes were in a sepia yellow, a trope that has been used to this day in just about any TV show or movie that takes a trip to Mexico.

In the years that followed, Soderbergh only became more prolific, often making multiple films in a single year. And while he might not have been able to adapt "Traffik" for TV at the time, he's now produced and directed more TV shows than most other filmmakers. Most notable of these might be the Clive Owen period medical drama "The Knick," for which Soderbergh directed every episode of its two seasons. He's also produced even more shows, like the adaptation of his film "The Girlfriend Experience" and Gregg Araki's "Now Apocalypse" for Starz.

By the time you're finished reading this sentence, Soderbergh has probably made three more films, and that's why he remains one of the hardest-working people in all of Hollywood.