Painkiller: Netflix’s slick drama offers a different take on America’s opioid epidemic

REVIEW: If Disney+’s sublime Dopesick took a Traffic/Syriana-esque multi-time and narrative approach to the creation, marketing and effects of the highly-addictive opioid OxyContin, then Netflix’s new Painkiller offers up something like a cross between Dark Waters, Spotlight and Up in the Air.

That’s because this six-part series focuses on depositions carried out by a legal team seeking to prosecute the drug’s manufacturers Purdue Pharma “for their role in starting America’s opioid epidemic”.

As they sell it to the somewhat skeptical US Attorney Office investigator Edie Flowers (In Treatment’s Uzo Aduba) – flown in for a five-hour session to share her experiences and expertise – they’ve consolidated hundreds of lawsuits that would take decades to resolve into a single case that they believe will “bring justice once and for all”.

“We can’t bring people back from the dead, but we can make these people pay.”

Such claims fail to impress Flowers, who has seen Purdue “settle” to avoid prosecution many times before.

However, even she is shocked when it’s revealed they’ve managed to depose the one man she never thought they’d be able to get on the record – Purdue Pharma chairman and president Richard Sackler (Matthew Broderick).

Like Dopesick, Painkiller’s fractured storytelling is initially a little challenging and confusing – and although this perhaps lacks a compelling character to rival Kaitlin Deaver’s injured miner or Michael Keaton’s conflicted doctor, A Beautiful Day in the Neighborhood writers Micah Fitzerman-Blue and Noah Harpster do at least attempt the same multi-faceted tactic by weaving in the stories of injured mechanic Glen Kryger (Taylor Kitsch) and young saleswoman Shannon Schaeffer (West Duchovny).

However, where Painkiller works best is in its portrayal and potted history of the Sackler family and Oxycontin. There’s more than a touch of Succession about the rise of patriarch Arthur Sr. (Marvel’s Agent Coulson Clark Gregg) and his realisation that “the big money in medicine was in sales and marketing – and lies”, as well as his children and wider whānau’s battle for his business interests and legacy after his death – a scrap seemingly “won” by Richard, who took the one remaining company with a potentially profitable product and found a way to transform millions into billions.

As memorably brought to life by Broderick (Election, Ferris Bueller’s Day Off), he cuts a compelling, calculating figure – a man who claimed he was “going to give lots of people their lives back” and “change the way America deals with their pain”, but was really just tweaking the recipe for an existing drug targeted at cancer patients to give it “twice the kick of morphine”, while reselling it is something associated with life, rather than death – and making it available to millions more.

Admittedly the strength of Broderick’s performance is also Painkiller’s weakness. By portraying him as something of a figure of fun – the hilarious opening scene involves him increasingly frustrated as he tries to source – and then stop – a chirping smoke alarm (a quest brilliantly under-scored by the strains of Simon & Garfunkel’s The Sound of Silence) – director Peter Berg (Deepwater Horizon, Patriots Day) somewhat undercuts the story’s serious nature.

As Aduba’s Flowers later reminds us, “this story is a tragedy”.

That’s something that’s brought home to the viewer at the start of every episode. Delivering the usual disclaimer about certain characters, names, incidents, locations and dialogue being “fictionalised for dramatic purposes” are the parents of young men and women whose lives were either broken or ended prematurely by being prescribed Oxycontin.

Their brief, often teary testimonies might make what follows seem a little shallow – and occasionally flippant – but they also offer a reminder of the importance and potential impact of stories like these, beyond simple entertainment.

Painkiller is now available to stream on Netflix.