Painkiller is a surprisingly watchable drama about the opioid crisis

Painkiller opens with a woman looking into the camera. “This programme is based on real events. However certain characters, incidents and locations have been fictionalised,” she says. “What is not fiction is that my son was prescribed OxyContin at age 15 . . . And at the age of 32, he died, all alone, in the freezing cold, in a gas station parking lot.” The opening credits roll. Then we see Richard Sackler (played by Matthew Broderick) waking up in his mansion.

Drawing from Patrick Radden Keefe’s 2017 New Yorker article (which became his multi-prize-shortlisted book Empire of Pain), Painkiller is a new six-part drama about the US opioid crisis, and the Sackler family’s role in the epidemic. OxyContin, a highly addictive drug, was promoted by Purdue Pharma as a non-addictive painkiller in the United States with unimaginably tragic consequences.

To drive home the scale of the damage, each episode begins with a tribute from a family member of an OxyContin or opioid victim. Then it cuts to the fictionalised drama, which follows three narrative strands. There is legal investigator Edie Flowers (Uzo Aduba), who explains how Sackler helped Purdue to blur the line between marketing and medicine; graduate sales rep Shannon (West Duchovny), who becomes seduced by the sleazy glamour of Purdue; and mechanic Glen (Tayler Kitsch) who becomes addicted to OxyContin following an accident.

Those who watched Hulu’s Dopesick will inevitably draw comparisons. Starring Michael Keaton as a persuadable doctor, that show touched on near-identical plot-points: we saw a keen sales rep, a law enforcement agent and a mineworker who is prescribed OxyContin after an accident. Yet there are significant differences. While Dopesick was unrelentingly bleak, Painkiller is pacy, slick and — surprisingly for this topic — extremely watchable. Edie Flowers’ narration provides a full overview of the Sackler affair, so that every beat of the business story rings clear. Tonally, it’s similar to The Big Short.

The downside is that Painkiller can also be brash and heavy-handed. (“Stick with cancer, you own cancer,” a wary board member warns Sackler during a tense meeting about OxyContin.) While the decision to include real-life stories is effective, some viewers may feel the juxtaposition is exploitative. Cumulatively, though, it’s hard not to feel the depth of the tragedy. This is a comprehensive drama about mass greed and its consequences — and one that deals another powerful blow to the Sackler legacy.

★★★★☆

On Netflix now