Netflix takes on the opioid issue in America with the scripted series Painkiller, which it calls “an examination of crime, accountability, and the systems that have repeatedly failed hundreds of thousands of Americans.” It looks specifically at how lives were altered by the creation of OxyContin.
Painkiller has six episodes. It is based on the Barry Meier book Pain Killer and the New Yorker article “The Family That Built an Empire of Pain,” by Patrick Radden Keefe.
Micah Fitzerman-Blue and Noah Harpster created the series and are showrunners. They executive produce with Eric Newman, Peter Berg and Alex Gibney. Berg directs.
Uzo Aduba, Matthew Broderick, Taylor Kitsch, Clark Gregg and Dina Shihabi are in the cast. Gregg plays Arthur Sackler and Broderick is Richard Sackler.
Vulture called the series “consistently upsetting.”
“Through its comprehensive recounting of a still-timely, avoidable national tragedy and the effective performances that complement those realities, Painkiller operates like Oxy’s own time-release mechanism,” the review says. “Its devastation lingers.”
USA Today said Hulu’s Dopesick, which had Michael Keaton as a doctor who starts to realize his prescriptions are turning his working-class patients into addicts, did a better job of telling the opioids-in-America story. “This is a story that deserves to be told, probably more than once. People have suffered and are suffering because of opioids, OxyContin in particular,” the review says. “But this isn’t the way. Painkiller tastelessly misses the mark.
