[Warning: The following contains MAJOR spoilers for Netflix’s Painkiller.]
Painkiller will feel familiar for those who have already seen Dopesick. The six-episode limited series premiered on Netflix on Thursday, August 10, and like the 2021 Hulu drama, it depicts the opioid epidemic in the United States.
Both series are based on true events, and feature members of the Sackler family (the family behind Purdue Pharma and the creation of OxyContin) and the legal teams dedicated to taking them down. Each also created fictional characters that represent the real lived experiences of people addicted to Oxy, the Purdue Pharma sales reps who pushed the drug, and more, although Painkiller does include introductions from real families of people who died of OxyContin overdoses at the beginning of each episode.
Painkiller and Dopesick are both based on books about the opioid crisis. The former is based on Pain Killer by Barry Meier, the latter Dopesick by Beth Macy. And while the shows are different in how they tell these stories, their real-life characters and the fictionalized ones have a lot in common.
Get to know the characters of Painkiller vs. Dopesick in the gallery below.
Painkiller, Limited Series, Available Now, Netflix
This story originally appeared on TV Insider
