Netflix’s ‘Painkiller’ Is a Melodramatic and Convoluted Assessment of the Opioid Crisis: TV Review
variety.comAramide Tinubu While Fentanyl now dominates headlines as the drug wreaking havoc on our society, back in the late 1990s and early 2000s, it was OxyContin that led conversations about the impact of overprescribed opioids.
Formulated, produced, marketed and sold by the family-run organization Purdue Pharma, Oxy quickly grew in popularity because it was marketed as a safe, “non-addictive” opioid.
Oxy was then pushed onto patients through respected healthcare professionals who were misinformed about the drug and profited greatly from prescribing it.
Barry Meier’s book “Pain Killer” and the New Yorker article “The Family That Built the Empire of Pain,” by Patrick Radden Keefe, documented the rise of OxyContin and the lasting impact it had here in the U.S., and both serve as the foundation for Netflix’s new limited series “Painkiller.” Directed by Peter Berg, the show is a fictionalized account of the opioid epidemic as told from the perspective of the survivors, victims, villains and those who stand somewhere in between.
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