STREAMING SCANDALS –
August 16,2023 – Dopesick: The Crime of the Century: The Pharmacist: How to Fix a Drug Scandal: Painkiller, Netflix’s drama about the opioid crisis is currently the streamer’s #1 English-language show in the world.
I should point out that the show has racked up so much viewership so fast that it actually debuted at the top of Netflix’s global Top 10 chart during its first week of streaming availability. And, really, if you paid attention to who’s behind the show, you’d have probably seen that coming. For example, the director of Painkiller — which presents the real-world origin story around OxyContin, its drugmaker Purdue Pharma, and the wealthy Sackler family behind that company — is Peter Berg, whose past credits include the superb NBC drama Friday Night Lights.
His co-executive producer, meanwhile, is Eric Newman, who’s working on Zack Snyder’s upcoming Netflix film Rebel Moon. Furthermore, Newman’s involvement in Painkiller is all the more interesting, considering he also previously worked on Narcos, a binge-worthy Netflix drama focused on an entirely different aspect of the drug business.
