Painkiller review: This story has been told before

Perhaps we’re meant to emote with American family man Glen, played by Taylor Kitsch, who is injured in his work as car mechanic and then prescribed the drug with terrible consequences, his story representative of the many thousands of others whose lives OxyContin destroyed.

“People,” as Flowers puts it, “in pain and with no option but to get better.”

The problem is that while the programme is well-acted and, as you would expect, well-directed by Hollywood director Peter Berg, the storylines are all shadows of things we’ve seen in The Wolf of Wall Street and Traffic.

In fact, if you’ve ever watched anything involving drugs, addiction, greed and corruption, you’ve seen Painkillers before — and done better.

The programme’s structure doesn’t help. There are many strands to this story and here they are shown in various orders and with flashbacks, which fractures the time line. It all feels a bit tangled.

And then there’s the question of tone. The programme’s moments of surrealism and comedy don’t sit well with the anger the viewer feels at how this crime occurred.

The Sackler family’s Jewish background is never mentioned, but it feels important to state how very far they strayed from concept of tikkun olam.

Even after settling civil claims by paying US$225 million, they wound up with an estimated $12 billion dollar fortune. There is every reason to reveal their abuse of public trust and the real cost of for-profit healthcare.

Perhaps this is what inspired co-show runner and son of an Orthodox rabbi Micah Fitzerman-Blue to tell the story. What a shame it isn’t told better.