BOGOTA, Colombia (AP) — The highest-rated TV show in Colombia follows a rather grim plot line: Boy meets girl. Boy smuggles tons of cocaine. Longtime pals betray each other. Everyone ends up dead or in jail.

Based on a former trafficker's tell-all book, the series provides an insider's look at the Norte del Valle cartel, one of the most feared drug organisations in Colombia today.

According to the US Drug Enforcement Administration, the cartel has exported more than 500 metric tons of cocaine to the United States at a profit of more than $10 billion.

"The Cartel of the Snitches" exposes a Colombian underworld in which decade-long friendships are sacrificed for a shipment of cocaine, corrupt police take orders from traffickers while other officers are outsmarted, and women plot with lovers to kill their husbands. Every episode sees at least one person killed.

Criticism has been fierce. The national police chief, Gen. Oscar Naranjo, complained in the country's leading newspaper, El Tiempo, that it doesn't give the government enough credit for its drug war victories.

But nearly half of Colombia's televisions are tuning into the series — the most expensive ever produced by a Colombian network, according to executive producer Cristina Palacios.

The success is due in part to the fun of seeing popular actors portray underworld figures who escort surgically enhanced girlfriends to high-society destinations. But it also suggests a cultural shift in a nation where drug money has influenced all levels of society.

"The traffickers' culture has been adopted by people who are not traffickers but act like them — diplomats who run over people, politicians who threaten and get fired, traffic police who fine them, and police who break all the traffic laws because 'they are the authority'," said Eduardo Arias, cultural editor for Colombia's largest news magazine, Semana.

Author-scriptwriter Andres Lopez — himself a former Norte del Valle trafficker — began writing the nonfiction book from a US prison, says both the book and TV series come to the same conclusion: the decades-long drug war is self-perpetuating, and it isn't only the traffickers who profit.

"DEA, FBI, ICE, Homeland Security, lawyers, this is a business for everyone. They need the war on drugs to get their job promotions, to get their budgets" Lopez said. "We're in a totally absurd war. But where we go from here, I don't know."

A decade ago, Colombia's civil conflict and cocaine industry were conspicuously absent from its prime-time television. Producers, actors and writers were too afraid of retaliation from the criminals, said Palacios.

Now, the traffickers have sought to lower their profiles and keep violence within their ranks, so actors feel a bit more relaxed, but the actors in "The Cartel of the Snitches" still worry that some real-life figures might not appreciate their unflattering portrayals.

Even though the real names Lopez used have been changed in the soap opera, it's not difficult to spot who is who.

The soap opera begins with Lopez's character getting his underworld start as a teenager in a cocaine lab, and intertwines love stories with true details of how ex-policemen came together to build the hugely profitable cartel.

"The Medellin cartel had the violence, and the Cali cartel corrupted a lot institutions, and what the Norte de Valle cartel did was to combine these two things and turn itself into an atomic bomb," Lopez said.

But just as the cartel became cocaine world's undisputed leader, its top traffickers turned on each other and tried to negotiate deals with US authorities, prompting a bloody internal war, Lopez said.

One of the most frightfully interesting of these characters is Wilber Varela, a ruthless former policeman who, when he wasn't personally killing or torturing people, enjoyed the company of actresses and models.

"He was three Pablo Escobars rolled in to one, a mind absolutely criminal," Lopez said of Varela, who was found dead in Venezuela in February, reportedly killed by one of his henchmen.

Other Norte del Valle leaders who inspired characters in the series also met unglamorous ends.

The cartel's handsome money-launderer, known as "Chupeta" or "Lollipop," was arrested last year despite disfiguring himself with plastic surgeries to avoid detection. The limping "Don Diego" was captured after the exhausting war frayed his nerves.

And Julio Correa — who was married to Colombia's most successful model, ended up being dismembered by fellow traffickers.

Actor Robinson Diaz plays Varela's character as a gleeful machine-gun toter with the eyes of a madman, but in the real world, he would like nothing more than for the cocaine wars to end.

"The best way of talking about our country is through these types of stories," says Diaz. "In the United States, only the pain of consumption is felt. Here, we're killing each other."