User Reviews

Dopesick isn’t easy to watch, but it’s definitely easy to recommend. Harsh, raw, and essential, it dives headfirst into one of the most devastating health crises of recent decades: the opioid epidemic in the United States. It doesn’t pull any punches, weaving together characters from every angle — doctors, FBI agents, victims, prosecutors — with a common enemy that has a very real name: Purdue Pharma. And the most chilling part is that everything it shows actually happened.Michael Keaton is outstanding, but he’s not the only one who shines. There are moments of intense drama and emotion, always with the same message in sight: this is a story about a system that allowed a pharmaceutical company to buy influence, lie shamelessly, and cause thousands of deaths while making billions. And although justice arrives late, at least it arrives.Narratively, it may lose a bit of pace at times, and the constant timeline shifts can be disorienting at first, but once it all starts to come together, the result is gripping. And when the puzzle pieces finally fit, the impact is huge. Dopesick is one of those series that stirs you and makes you think — but also keeps you hooked. Exactly what a great true story should do.

Dopesick is pretty well done because they show many angles of the effects from the drug Oxycontin.

An interesting show, but take enormous liberties with the truth. For example; it makes a huge deal about OXY commercials never mentioning the name of the drug. The US is one of only two nations that allows direct pharmaceutical advertising. There are two kinds of ads, those that mention the drug, and those that don't. Watch network TV news, any night. The only people who ACTUALLY exist in the mini-series are the Sacklers (who are made to look like literal demons, even though none have ever been convicted of anything) and the two assistant US attorneys in Virginia. EVERYONE else is made up; the DEA official, the doctor played by Michael Keaton, the Purdue detail rep. One of the biggest ironies is that studies from Harvard and Stanford confirm that the addiction rates for people prescribed opioids legitimately ends up being at, or just under 1%. That isn't chopped liver, but it is not what the show portrays. Two years after the show - 25 years after the events in the show, the United States is seeing the worst drug epidemic in its history - and it has nothing to do with ANY pharmaceutical drugs. The issue are bootleg meth and fentanyl, killing a whole magnitude more people. One of the great ironies is that the whole show demonizes Oxycontin but calls out the NAME brand of one of the most promising Medication Assisted Therapy drugs (buprenorphine). Some fact, a lot of fiction.

The performance of Michael Keaton is some of the best acting I've seen in awhile. He deserves every inch of all the prizes he won for this performance. The only neg for me is the somewhat overwrought non-linear storytelling

[SPOILER ALERT: This review contains spoilers.]

Dopesick began very well for me - after the first three episodes I was hooked. And to be hooked by a story whose ending I already knew was very attractive. However, the full eight episodes are probably two more than necessary, so entangled does the plotting get with the secondary plots of Betsy and her family - this is not a criticism of any performances, but the actual writing/plotting feels weighed down by the writers' desire to cover every base. And the time jumps, indicated by a scrolling timeline, don't help. By the final episode, I was exhausted trying to grasp where we were, when we were present, past, long past, who was the focus of each scene, etc. But it is watchable and binge-worthy -- I watched the full series with a minor break for snacks.

(Mauro Lanari) Why a non-linear narrative? Perhaps to distinguish it from "Traffic" (Soderbergh 2000), from the 4th and final excellent season of "Goliath", from the extraordinary "Kill the Messenger" directed in 2014 by the same Michael Cuesta who signed the 3rd and 4th episode of this "Dopesick"? Just to say that on the subject there were already illustrious precedents, but all affected by the similar flaw: the apology of quixoticism, the idea that it is better to win battles by losing the war rather than the opposite. A television miniseries that therefore exalts the "beautiful losers": better than nothing or not? If humans survive only by taking some kind of drug, there must be an explanation.

I haven't seen something this poorly written or acted in a while. It does check off all the social justice boxes for diversity and inclusion but that's all it's got going for it. Some scenes are good and the dialogue feels like it was written by a competent person who is humans. Some scenes feel really out of place and the dialogue is so badly written it makes you want wish you were never alive. This is why I don't watch any original programming on Hulu or any of these services. It's so low budget that you are rarely going to get a hit. But that's the point they just want content to say they have content. They don't care if it's good. None of the characters are interesting.

admirable [ ad-mer-uh-buhl ] adjective worthy of admiration; inspiring approval, reverence, or affection.

Absolutely fantastic series. I enjoyed it more than latest Bond movie. Must watch if you like a bit of drama.

Had high hopes, but even the excellent Michael Keaton cannot save this boilerplate melodrama that has all the nuance and subtle complexity of a ten megaton bomb. Viewers looking for another "Wire" will be sorely disappointed, Dopesick settles for depressing schmaltz, hammering home repeatedly about the evils of Purdue. As a side note, when making dramas that are "based on a true story", actors should be picked that accurately reflect the ethnicity of the place and time period. For example, if there was a movie about Japanese samurai taking place during the Kamakura period during the 12th century, I would be put off if a bunch of white guys showed up in samurai armor. Dopesick is guilty of altering the ethnicity and gender of characters for the sack of diversity. Female coal miners? Ok...wait there is also a black female lesbian coal miner? Ok.... Now we discover the white federal prosecutor from VA who moved to Appalachia has a black wife and bi-racial children - in 2002. Since the kids seem to be about ten, that would have meant that he ands wife met and fell in love in the late 80's. I grew up in Virginia. Bi-racial couples are uncommon in VA today, but in the 80's and 90's virtually unheard of, at least between white men and black women. It did happen (the Loving's for example) but it was rare, and such discrepancies are off-putting because they pull me out of the illusion the show is attempting to create.