Painkiller

Matt Roush says...

The story of America’s addiction to Oxycontin—“heroin in pill form”—and the legal scandal that blemished the venal Sackler pharmaceutical family, was dramatized in 2021 for Hulu as the Emmy-winning Dopesick. And while nothing in this six-part docudrama version matches the power of Michael Keaton’s award-winning performance as Dopesick’s core character of a country doctor-turned-addict, it remains a compelling and enraging cautionary tale, even when director Pete Berg’s production becomes overwrought and even cartoonish in depicting the villains’ rapacious greed. Each episode is introduced, documentary-style, by a grieving parent of a child who succumbed to the drug, a sobering start to a solid docudrama with strong work by Uzo Aduba as a frustrated U.S. Attorney’s office investigator, serving as narrator to the crimes of Purdue Pharma head Richard Sackler (a calcified Matthew Broderick), who in a tired device is hounded by the arrogant ghost of his grandfather Arthur (Clark Gregg), whose callous marketing philosophies made the family billions. Taylor Kitsch co-stars as a working-class family man whose back injury leads to a spiral of addiction, with West Duchovny (David’s daughter with Téa Leoni) as a newbie Pharma saleswoman who lives to regret her success.

What's Worth Watching (Aug 10)