The bestest character in Narcos (Netflix) is Judy Moncada, the wife of a drug kingpin. She’s got class, she’s got diamonds, she’s got a painting above the fireplace of Judy with a lion. When her husband is murdered by real-life drug dealer Pablo Escobar, she goes on a murderous rampage – but never, ever puts down her drink. She walks into a gang meeting in a cellar and a sweaty man in a vest says: “Someone get Judy a beer.”
Narcos, a historical crime drama about the US war on drugs, is not exactly family viewing. It is set in a place and time – Colombia in the Eighties and Nineties – when evil was so ubiquitous that no one seemed to notice it. Pablo is the main villain: a fat genius with a goofy grin. But the communists kill people, too, and so does the government. The line between trafficker, socialist and businessman is thin. Pablo sells cocaine to the Americans. He keeps the cops at bay by bribing them. He keeps the people onside by pretending to love them: they are his eyes and ears on the streets. All of humanity is compromised. You either fight dirty against Pablo or you enable him or you tolerate him, and if you have the misfortune to be one of a thousand presidents of Colombia, you could find yourself with blood on your hands. To go to war with Escobar is to trigger a civil war within the country. I’d heard of the guy and I knew he was bad, but I never realised he gunned cops down in the street or put bombs on planes.
