Joe Hildebrand: Australia’s bizarre romance with TV drug lords

Joe Hildebrand wants to know when TV viewers decided that drug-dealing murderers are just misunderstood philanthropists.

Of all the wonders that the 21st century has produced, perhaps the quaintest is the loveable drug lord.

Say what you like about Scarface, at least he was unequivocally bad. And while Michael Corleone was happy to bump off his brother, he drew the line at dope dealing.

But watch Gabriel Byrne’s charming coke smuggler on SBS’s ZeroZeroZero for more than five minutes and you find yourself filling in a nomination form for Father of the Year.

Of course, you say, it’s Gabriel Byrne, and fair enough – he is impossible not to love. Indeed the whole series is as addictive as the substance he’s trafficking, which is why I ended up binge-watching it on SBS On Demand.

Diego Luna in Narcos: Mexico. Supplied by Netflix. Surely someone that handsome can’t be all bad?

But Byrne is just the latest in the new line of cartel bosses with a heart of gold.

Consider the equally excellent series Narcos on Netflix.

This had two US DEA agents pitting their wits against Pablo Escobar. To be fair, history didn’t give the writers much wiggle room here.

Escobar was a brutal terrorist psychopath and he was portrayed as such – yet even then his son said the show made him look much nicer than he actually was.

But in the follow-up Narcos: Mexico the narco in question was Felix Gallardo, played by the dashing Diego Luna. Even when he is torturing a DEA agent to death you can’t help but sympathise with the guy – surely someone that handsome can’t be all bad?

So when did we decide that drug dealing murderers are just misunderstood philanthropists who want a better life for their families? And when did they all stop looking like Al Pacino?

It’s almost as though Hollywood woke up one morning and decided that from now on it wanted its drugs to be ethically sourced.

Still, it opens up the door to a whole range of possibilities for future TV shows: Nine could recast their last crime outing as Underbelly: Goodness; Seven could tweak the title of its upcoming show to Australian Gangster (Turns Over New Leaf); and, Foxtel could have Mr Inbetween-But-Leaning-Slightly-To-The-Left.

Joe Hildebrand is on 2GB Nights with John Stanley on Tuesdays and Thursdays from 8pm