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Comedy actor “Viva” Harsha plays a dutiful Telangana state traffic policeman in Culture Machine and Youtube channel VIVA’s new video on drunken driving. “Drinking brings a different person out of most of us” – that’s the riff the parody plays on. Riding on it, though, is a public service message: “Drinking is fun. Drunk and driving is not.”

The video (above), in Telugu (with subtitles), portrays the various excuses drunk people come up with to avoid being tested at traffic police checkpoints for drinking. “How much did you drink, son?” Harsha’s traffic cop asks one driver after another.

He comes across a plethora of drunks behind the wheel: an overconfident driver who traps himself, the quintessential hero-type wearing sunglasses at night who tries to teach the cops how to treat a “big man in the society”, a driver in denial, the one who tries to get away, and the one who uses his “connections” to get off, only for it to backfire. Plus, a special cameo by film celebrity Sai Dharam Tej.

Whatever the excuse, Harsha’s got to catch ’em all.