The show is rooted in three stories:Purdue’s machinations in producing and marketing the drug Oxycontin;the work of doctor Samuel Finnix (Michael Keaton),who is convinced by that marketing to prescribe Oxycontin for his patients in a Virginia mining town,with catastrophic effects;and the prosecutors led by Rick Mountcastle (Peter Sarsgaard) who later pursue the company for their abuses in promoting their drug as “non-addictive”,a claim they knew was false.
Dopesick is an uneasy watch,showcasing all that is worst of America and the modern world:the misery of the poor and the rapacious amorality of the rich. Of course,it also has heroes:courageous truth-tellers and crusading lawyers who fight to expose and redress the wrongs of the past.
But their heroism came only after colossal damage had been done,and indeed continues,the opioid epidemic is by no means finished,and the fact the Sackler family was eventually held to account could not put the genie back in the bottle.
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That’s a big part of the show’s gut-wrenching impact:the knowledge that in the true story behind the screen,there can be no happy ending;just a slow,indefinite grind towards hopefully making things a little better bit by bit.
Of course,when a TV show latches onto a true story with the seeming aim of not just taking advantage of a good story,but of bringing injustice to light,there is always an awkward question of balance. If you’re making a real-life drama,you need real-life people,your main characters need to come fully to life. But at the same time,when dealing in the kind of big important issues thatDopesick does,sprinkling in details of characters’ personal lives can feel like trivial distraction. The show occasionally stumbles onto the wrong side of this line,and sometimes the effort to make us care about the victims by spending time on their domestic travails instead puts the brake on the story.
That’s a pretty minor quibble,though,for a show that for the vast majority of the time gets the task of telling a story with multiple strands,in multiple time periods,spot-on. In particular it is carried by a series of quite brilliant performances.