The premiere episode of the gripping and stylishly rendered Netflix limited series “Painkiller” begins in documentary fashion, with a woman named Jen Trejo telling us, “This program is based on real events. However, certain characters, names, incidents, locations and dialogue have been fictionalized for dramatic purposes. What wasn’t fictionalized is that my son [Christopher] at the age of 15 was prescribed OxyContin. He lived in years and years of addiction … and at the age of 32, he died, all alone in the freezing cold in a gas station parking lot, and we miss him.”
Each of the six chapters in the series begins with tragic testimony from someone who has lost a loved one to opioid addiction, and it shakes us to the core. We’re then plunged into a story that is fictionalized but carries the ring of essential truth. Based on Patrick Radden Keefe’s New Yorker article “The Family That Built an Empire of Pain” and Barry Meier’s “Pain Killer: An Empire of Deceit and the Origin of America’s Opioid Epidemic,” with all six episodes directed by Peter Berg (“Friday Night Lights,” “Deepwater Horizon,” “Patriots Day”), this is a well-plotted and expertly acted story outlining how the Sackler family and Purdue Pharma created the pain-relieving prescription drug OxyContin.
