Dopesick (2021)

Dopesick is a hard-hitting limited drama series that plunges viewers into the center of America’s opioid crisis, tracing how one painkiller’s rise reshaped lives, institutions, and communities. Moving between the polished boardrooms of Purdue Pharma, a struggling Virginia mining town, and the investigative corridors of the DEA, the show interweaves the perspectives of executives, doctors, patients, lawyers, and regulators to reveal how corporate marketing, medical practice, and policy failures combined to fuel widespread addiction. Watching Dopesick is immersive and emotionally intense: you’ll see the slow, often invisible slide from legitimate pain treatment to dependency, experience the heartbreak and chaos that addiction brings to families and communities, and feel the anger and moral complexity of courtroom and investigative scenes as institutions are held to account. The series balances character-driven storytelling with procedural tension—moments of intimate human drama are set against mounting legal and journalistic pressure—so viewers get both the personal toll and the systemic forces behind the epidemic. Expect a thoughtful, uncompromising drama that educates as much as it moves you. It’s enraging and heartbreaking in turns, driven by meticulous writing and committed performances, and it leaves you with a clearer, more urgent understanding of how policy, profit, and human vulnerability intersect. Note: the series contains mature and potentially triggering themes, including addiction, overdose, and loss.

Actors: Michael Keaton, Peter Sarsgaard, Michael Stuhlbarg

Genre: Drama

8.6 /10 8.6 /10