If any series can do without the Spoiler warning on its Imdb reviews, it's Banged Up Abroad. Here is the yawningly predictable path to jail, starting with a young man dissatisfied with his bourgeois life, and wanting excitement, adventure, a gamble, maybe a whiff of cordite. And the wealth that always seems to go with it.
Tim from Melbourne takes a teaching job in Bangkok, frustrated that his wages don't allow him enough of the easy bar-room life that he so enjoys, especially in the evocatively named Rick's Bar. One night, Rick offers him $1000 to traffic one of the hookers to Japan on a false passport. He pulls off four of these missions, only the last one proving tricky, as he has to convince a (rightly) sceptical immigration official that he's researching Eastern mysticism - and the hooker's story has to match, too.
Emboldened by success, he declares that he's ready to graduate to something riskier. A suave American, Bradley, invites him to lunch at a luxury hotel ("I felt flattered"), and puts on his welcome-to-my-world act. Tim agrees to $10,000 for smuggling a block of heroin to L.A. - not a lot, really, for risking the death penalty. When a traffic incident causes him to miss his flight, the suitcase, already passed by customs and sealed with official tape, is inspected by police and the heroin discovered in plain sight. We can reveal that this was not just a random spot-check, though we can't reveal more. Let's just say Tim is lucky to get life, not death, in Bangkok's biggest and worst jail, where he (poetically) becomes a heroin addict before being granted a Royal Pardon after just over five years, thanks to persistent campaigning by his mother. And his churchy patter about being a 'changed person' is as nauseating as ever, when you consider the fate of the trafficked hookers.
I think the moral of the story is don't make plans over drinks. And better stay in the day-job, anyway.