The Trade - Season 1

Producer-director Matthew Heineman, in his second go-round with the war on drugs ... has given us an unnervingly close-up study of the conflict.

It's an intimate style the director, Matthew Heineman, used in the Oscar-nominated Cartel Land, and it puts a face to people impacted by the crisis.

The Trade shows viewers a lot of what the officers see - the dirty, bug infested mattresses, the rooms that look as if they contain human excrement - but the series also shows the sadder side of this difficult process.

On the relatively positive side, "The Trade" is a reminder that the people who are caught up in this world are only human; it encourages empathy.

That makes it easy to recommend The Trade to people who wouldn't watch a Frontline report on opioids. This isn't a documentary that has occasional exciting patches. It's a thriller that occasionally does the wonky work of a documentary.

Some of it is fascinating...

It's not that the depictions in The Trade are lies: I'm sure they aren't. But someone needs to start telling the rest of the story. Like now.

It is transfixing.

The Trade is also a portrait of perseverance.