How did opioid crisis drama Painkiller make one of the most tragic stories of our time feel so implausible?

Netflix’s true-life drama has drawn widespread comparisons to the 2021 series ‘Dopesick’. This is an important story that bears repeating, argues Louis Chilton – but it needs to be handled better than this

Corporate creep: Matthew Broderick as Richard Sackler in ‘Painkiller’ (Keri Anderson/Netflix)

At first, it seems like the problem with Painkiller is simply bad timing. Netflix’s six-part miniseries, which covers the scandalous opioid epidemic through the eyes of the victims, perpetrators and those that sought justice, comes less than two years after Dopesick, Hulu’s own miniseries that took a similarly holistic look at the crisis. Both series explore the wrongdoing of Purdue Pharma, the company’s nefarious president Richard Sackler, and the rise of the addictive painkiller OxyContin. It’s a big subject. Opioids are responsible for more than 600,000 deaths in the US and Canada since 1999; hundreds of thousands more are anticipated.

But no, the issue is not merely that Painkiller is too similar to Dopesick (although it is). Any tragedy that has this much of a seismic impact surely warrants scrutiny from different angles. If anything, TV has historically been far too unwilling to engage with the opioid crisis, an insidious and far-reaching epidemic that tore apart communities and was itself overlooked by American regulators, lawmakers and the media until it was far too late. For those in the US, shows like Painkiller can be a vital way of understanding a phenomenon that has already impacted whole swathes of the country; for those of us in the UK, where opioid use has not been as ravaging, it is an important window into a travesty to which many remain oblivious. It is a story that bears repeating. The greater problem is that Painkiller is so vastly inferior to Dopesick as to feel trivialising of such a vast scandal. It feels, in that familiar Netflix way, not like art but content: shallow and schematic and “bingeworthy”. Anyone who has seen Dopesick will surely walk away from Painkiller feeling underwhelmed and unenlightened. Anyone who hasn’t would be far better off watching the former instead.

As a point of comparison, let’s look at two narratively similar segments from both series: scenes in which Purdue Pharma boss Sackler convinces Purdue’s higher-ups of OxyContin’s potential. In Dopesick, this happens at the very beginning of the series (episode one, “First Bottle”), with Sackler (played here by Michael Stuhlbarg) delivering a monologue about pain. “For too long, the American medical community has been ignoring chronic pain, and this has created an epidemic of suffering,” he says. Later, he will make queasy promises of a “blockbuster drug”, but always, there is the mantra of “pain”: how to eradicate it, how to monetise it. The pushing of OxyContin is framed as, if not a moral imperative, then at least a solution to a very real medical problem. It doesn’t matter whether Stuhlbarg’s character, or anyone, believes a word he’s saying. His colleagues are sold.

A couple of similar moments occur in the first episode of Painkiller (“The One to Start With, the One to Stay With”). In one scene, Sackler (here, Matthew Broderick) is seen speaking about becoming the “gatekeeper” between pain and pleasure. In another, looking through a two-way mirror at a focus group, he starts excitedly pounding his fists on the desk. “They all have an idea about morphine, but oxycodone is a clean slate,” he tells his colleagues (including his father and uncle). “You wanna take a drug with twice the kick of morphine and give it to… anybody?” asks one of the sceptics in the room. “Yes, yes I do,” comes Sackler’s response. A few lines later, he describes OxyContin as “The drug you never knew you needed.” You can almost hear Don Draper turning in his grave.

The tonal difference between these two scenes is small but unmissable. In both versions, Richard Sackler is presented as a creepy, soft-spoken villain. If anything, Stuhlbarg’s version is more grotesque in his characterisation, seeming somehow almost half-dead, a smart-suited ghoul. But Dopesick situates his villainy in the real world. By veiling his antic greed in the language of good intentions, it doesn’t mean we, the audience, are any less wise to what’s going on. Painkiller’s whole conversation, meanwhile, is cartoonishly blasé, and sacrifices something vital – plausibility.

Human stories demand plausibility, and the opioid epidemic is a deeply human tragedy.  Not only could this happen – it did. It is an ongoing act of mass, corporate violence that was born from human failings: greed, complacency, and indifference. Humanity, such that it is, runs all the way through the story of OxyContin. It is found in the unbearable sadness of the lives ruined, in the warped psychopathy of those needlessly pushing the drug, and in the furious decency of those fighting for justice. In failing to give its dialogue and characters credibility, Painkiller fails to capture the humanity of its story, and loses its message in the process.

Richard the first: Michael Stuhlbarg as Sackler in 2021’s ‘Dopesick' (Hulu)

As the facts of the case continue to be picked apart, there will, presumably, be a lot more stories about the opioid crisis in film and television. This year has already seen the release of All the Beauty and the Bloodshed, an intelligent and powerful documentary focusing on the artist Nan Goldin’s efforts to hold the Sackler family to account. Perhaps the documentary’s most moving sequence sees the Sacklers forced to listen to testimonies from family members who have lost people to opioids: life, humanity, is foregrounded. In terms of drama, though, Dopesick remains the yardstick against which any new efforts will be held. Being a Netflix production, Painkiller has access to a much broader audience. It’s a shame it couldn’t measure up.

‘Painkiller’ is available to stream on Netflix now