The Orlando Sentinel from Orlando, Florida • 15

The Orlando Sentinel MONDAY, April 23, 1990 Jay Boyar's movie picks debut in daily TV schedule, C-6 I 0 1c it A Greg Dawson 3 TELEVISION f1 I i If DANA A. FASANOSfcNl INEL Technology, privacy clash on job By Elizabeth Lee GWINNETT DAILY NEWS ployees do on the job. Telephone-call accounting will record the number of calls an employee makes, the numbers dialed and the duration of the conversation. Service observation enables supervisors to listen in on tele employer and worker has taken on Or-wellian overtones, as opponents of electronic monitoring contend that the new technology puts Big Brother in the workplace. Opponents say the technologies have created an electronic sweatshop in some offices and point to the abuses that sometimes result.

They raise concerns about in- phone conversations. Technological advances have increasingly automated the office, but they also have generated questions about priva Technological advances have increasingly automated the office, but they also have generated questions about privacy in the workplace. ployee's work. Service observation, frequently used on long-distance operators, airline reservation agents and telemarketers, helps companies ensure that workers treat customers with courtesy and give them correct information. Telephone-call accounting can help companies keep track of costly long-distance calls and perhaps reduce the personal calls made by employees.

The debate over privacy in the workplace doesn't stop with electronic monitoring. Advances in medical technology have opened up new areas of concern, as emj ployers have gained the ability to per, form AIDS tests, genetic screening, poly graph exams and drug tests. Employers can delve into a worker's credit history. Bosses have pried in the private lives of 79 percent of U.S. workers by asking Please see SECRETS, C-3 Elite Brits at their best in thoughtful drug tale Whenever American TV critics grow too giddy over Masterpiece Theater, Hollywood voices testily point out that what we see on PBS represents only the best of British television that we never get a peek at the vast English wasteland.

But while it may be true that their worst is just as bad as our worst cold comfort indeed it's undeniable that the best of British TV often soars far above the best that Hollywood can muster. A case in point is Traffik, an absorbing five-part series about the international heroin trade that explores the dynamics of drug trafficking and the human tragedy it spawns more profoundly than any Hollywood production has. It's also a crackling good suspense yarn, tracing the heroin on its panoramic odyssey from the mountain valleys of Pakistan to Germany and England. (Much of the series is set in Hamburg, hence the German spelling of traffic.) Traffik premieres tonight on Masterpiece Theater with a two-hour episode (8 p.m., WMFE-Channel 24). Part 2 airs 10 p.m.

Sunday when Masterpiece Theater returns to its regular time slot after being bumped' Sunday by the Channel 24 art auction. What distinguishes Traffik from the best American television programs on the subject, such as NBC's Drug Wars: The Camarena Story, is breadth and depth of vision. This is no black-and-white, good-versus-evil tale of outmanned DEA agents tracking drug lords to their gilded lairs south of the border. Good and evil are present in Traffik, but they are often intertwined like threads in a tapestry. The most sympathetic character is a Pakistani farmer who scrapes out a meager living by growing the bulbous, sky-blue poppies (the raw material of heroin) until the government sends in troops to burn the fields as a token gesture to Britain.

He seems more a "victim" than the upper middle-class kids back in London smoking the heroin. The ambivalent main character is Jack Lithgow, a British minister whose job is to persuade Pakistan to crack down on heroin exporters. His official duty becomes a personal crusade when he discovers that his daughter has become a heroin addict. The subplot involving Lithgow's daughter is no gimmick. Rather, it opens Lithgow's eyes to the urgency of his mission and illuminates the nature of addiction in moving fashion.

A second intriguing subplot concerns a German drug agent's efforts to bust up the Karachi-Hamburg drug connection, whose main supplier is a Pakistani businessman who funds the local drug rehab center by day and ships heroin by night. All of these subplots come together under director Alastair Reid's masterful hand to create a thoroughly engrossing drama with something to say. Filmed in England, Germany and Pakistan, the series is visually compelling as well. The cast is uniformly excellent, especially Bill Paterson (who resembles Willie on ALF) as Lithgow, Julia Ormond as his pathetically addicted daughter, and Lindsay Duncan as a former Olympic runner who takes over the Hamburg end of the drug cartel when her husband is busted. Traffik offers no heroes and no easy solutions.

We can't limit supply, only demand, Lithgow says at the end. The only real answer, he says, "is to create a soci ATLANTA It's Monday morning. You walk into the office, log on to your computer, fire off a jocular message to a co-worker about your weekend adventures and settle in for a day of work. Five minutes later your boss drops by your desk and makes a reference to the contents of what you thought was a private message. Suddenly, it's no laughing matter.

You might also consider this: Those computer programs that enable supervisors to read their employees' electronic mail also can enable them to keep track of how much time workers spend completing a task, how many keystrokes they make and how many mistakes occur. Electronic monitoring isn't the only way employers keep track of what em BIHMMHH creased stress, a declining quality of life at work and the fairness of the monitoring and the way its results are employed. Businesses that use the technology say it enables them to streamline the work process, to plan workloads and get an unbiased measure of the quality of an em- cy in the work- place. Employers have embraced new technologies as a way to more efficiently manage the work process. However, some employees charge that those same programs can take away an employee's dignity and autonomy.

The debate over balancing the rights of 3E aw-- y. Caine's 'Shock' is a bit dark but delightful Easy-acting James Stewart earned glory By Vincent Canby By Jay Boyar NEW YORK TIMES SENTINEL MOVIE CRITIC Vp Qi SI NEW YORK Hollywood's most significant, if accidental, contribution to the performing arts has been the great behavioral actors, exemplified by the lanky, long-boned, uncommonly graceful James Stewart, who will be honored tonight at Lincoln Center. Stewart is the last of that rare breed of male stars whose careers certified the star system as it operated virtually from the beginning of the sound era. Stewart, Spencer Tracy, Gary Cooper, Clark Gable, Cary Grant, John Wayne and Henry Fonda: They ety that people will want to live in, not es were larger man me, Doin De-cause the screens were larger then and because the fusion of the performers' public and private personalities created something bigger than the sum of the two parts, something mythical. When Stewart steps onto the stage of Avery Fisher Hall tonight, the Film Society will be paying tribute to the consistently surprising work of a Princeton Triangle man who later made cape from.

Traffik arrives in America already hav Ad executive Michael Caine is comforted by co-worker Elizabeth McGovern in 'Shock to the ing won several international awards. An Emmy might now be in order. wo satires of big business are competing for your attention. Both Crazy People and A Shock to the System explore issues of corporate politics and greed, and both are set in the world of advertising. The ultimate irony is that Crazy People will probably win the box-office race because it has the more aggressive advertising cam-paign.

That's a shame, really, because A Shock to the System is clearly the superior movie. Crazy People (which I've dealt with elsewhere) has a few good laughs, but goes soft. A Shock to the System, a dark comedy with the structure of a thriller, is delightfully hard-edged. Director Jan Egleson (PBS' Lemon Sky) and screenwriter Andrew Klavan (author of the John Wells mystery novels, under the pseudonym Keith Peterson) are newcomers to feature filmmaking, and at times their inexperience shows. The dialogue is often a shade too literary, and the movie's visual style is far from elegant.

(Plus, there's a plot point involving barbiturates that ought to have been clearer.) But Egleson and Klavan know exactly what their themes are, and they've got the guts and brains to carry them through. Besides, whenever their efforts flag, Michael Caine's exceptional performance is always a compensation. Caine is cast as Manhattan ad exec Graham Marshall, a man in a gray flannel suit who used to think of himself as a sorcerer. He once believed that through sheer force of will he could start the world spinning his way. But Graham is getting older, and he feels his powers fading.

Maybe he can ignore his middle-age spread, thinning hair and the way the veins under his eyes stand out. But his harpy wife (Swoosie Kurtz) is a constant reminder of his decline, and so is the way that the temperamental wiring in his white-elephant home keeps short-circuiting. What keeps Graham going, despite all this, is the prospect of a promotion at his firm a big promotion that would validate his life by proving he still has the-old magic. He's so certain that the promotion is in the bag that he has already started to celebrate. Stewart Attention, Nightline fans who haven't been able to stay up until midnight to catch Ted Koppel since he was taken hostage by WFTV-Channel 9 more than a vear ago.

You can see some of what you've been missing at 10 p.m. Tuesday when ABC presents The Best of Nightline With Ted Kovpel, 1980-1990." The special will include footage which has never been seen before in addition to clips from some of Koppel's most memorable shows, including interviews with A Shock to the System' Cast Michael Caine, Elizabeth McGovern, Peter Riegert, Swoosie Kurtz Director: Jan Egleson Screenwriter: Andrew Klavan Clnematographer Paul Goldsmith Music: The Turtle Island String Quartet Running time: 1 hour, 30 minutes Industry rating: (restricted) Parents' guide: language, adult situations Theaters: Colonial Promenade, Florida Mali, Republic Square, UC6, University 8, Wekiva Riverwalk, Osceola East, Marketplace Reviewing key excellent, good, average, poor, awful good and, through him, to a seemingly effortless kind of movie acting that has only recently been recognized as "serious." The tradition has been carried on in the careers of Paul Newman and Clint Eastwood, and is continuing, it seems, in the work of a man young enough to be Stewart's grandson, Tom Cruise. The Stewart credits embrace a large part of Hollywood history from 1935, when he made his debut in the trunk of a car in The Murder Man, through the following years and decades when he appeared in some of the most memorable films of some of the greatest directors of their eras: George Stevens's Vivacious Lady (1938); Frank Ca-pra's You Can't Take It With You (1938), Mr. Smith Goes to Washington (1939) and It's a Wonderful Life (1946); Ernst Lubitsch's Shop Around the Corner Pleasasee STEWART, C-3 Jim and Tammy Faye Bakker and Gary Hart, and his histonc "town meetings in the Middle East and South Africa that brought together longtime antagonists on the same stage. WFTV general manager Merritt Rose has said there are no immediate plans for returning Niahtline to the 11:30 p.m.

time slot, where it airs in about 70 percent of fcase see SHOCK, C-3 1 across America..