Griselda shows that drug dealing on screen is becoming as thrilling as a tax return

Netflix’s latest miniseries looks at the story of Griselda Blanco, the Colombian drug baron who took over the Miami cocaine scene in the 1980s. It’s nothing but crime story clichés, says Louis Chilton – when did drug dealing become so tedious to watch?

The legend of Griselda: Sofia Vergara as drug baron Blanco in Netflix’s new miniseries (Netflix)

Are you after a fast, buzzy TV premise? Just dig out the razor blades and powered sugar – and come up with a story about dealing cocaine. From Scarface to Top Boy to Narcos, the illegal drug trade has been an endless source of fascination across film and TV. It is a story that has been told and retold: the frenzied rises and antic collapses of empires built on powder.

The latest project to fit this mould is Griselda, a six-part Netflix drama focusing on the real-life crimes of Griselda Blanco (Sofía Vergara), a Colombian woman who moved to Miami in the 1980s and built a drug trafficking empire. Griselda has shot to No 1 in the streaming service’s charts, and has prompted no small amount of praise for Vergara. (Known for her comic roles, in particular Modern Family’s more-than-just-a-trophy-wife Gloria Delgado-Pritchett, Vergara is acting here against type and under prosthetics.) On the surface, the series is exactly the kind of lurid, attention-grabbing drug narrative that has enraptured viewers for decades. It’s got all the snorting and shooting of Tony Montana, with a more contemporary girlboss undertone. So why, then, is Griselda so tiresome?

Vergara’s series has exposed an unfortunate truth about these stories: the selling of drugs simply isn’t that interesting to watch. Even if you take into account the thrills that accompany it – fights, power grabs, gangland assassinations, all of which Griselda features – there’s something all a bit rote about the archetype. The best and most interesting drug-trade narratives have always sought to do something different with the genre. The Wire handled drug dealing with a prosaic realism, a lens through which to scrutinise the city of Baltimore’s systemic socio-political failings. Breaking Bad was, in some ways, a conventional rise-and-fall morality tale but the specifics of its making – from its chemistry-teacher-turned-crook premise to the eccentric twists, to its one-of-a-kind visual language – elevated it far beyond this. Griselda, meanwhile, walks the path of cliché, hitting familiar crime beats without ingenuity or particular flair.