# Dopesick (2021)

> A miniseries tracing how a pharmaceutical company's deceptive marketing ignited the American opioid epidemic, from a struggling Virginia mining town to Manhattan boardrooms.

Canonical page: https://ember.film/tv/92371

## Facts

- Seasons: 1
- Episodes: 8
- Episode runtime: 62 min
- Status: Ended
- Genres: drama
- Created by: Danny Strong
- Network: Hulu
- Cast: Michael Keaton, Peter Sarsgaard, Michael Stuhlbarg, Will Poulter, John Hoogenakker, Kaitlyn Dever, Rosario Dawson, Will Chase
- TMDB rating: 8.6/10
- IMDb: https://www.imdb.com/title/tt9174558/

## Ember's analysis

- Pacing: measured
- Intensity: strong
- Complexity: layered
- Violence: mild
- Tone: bleak, sober, harrowing, humane, tense

## What critics say

Viewers broadly acclaim the acting and the sweeping true-story treatment of the opioid epidemic, though the series loses some grip in its final stretch.

## Synopsis

Dopesick (2021) is a American limited series created by Danny Strong for Hulu, an eight-episode true story dramatization of the opioid epidemic. Michael Keaton plays Samuel Finnix, a small town doctor in a distressed Virginia mining community who begins to see the devastation of addiction among his patients, while Peter Sarsgaard plays Rick Mountcastle, a DEA agent pursuing the people behind the drug trade, and Michael Stuhlbarg plays Richard Sackler, a pharmaceutical executive in opulent Manhattan. Will Poulter, Kaitlyn Dever and Rosario Dawson round out the principal cast, following a miner injured in an accident, a young woman drawn into dependence, and a government official confronting the corporate machine. The engine of the story is the gap between a company's sales campaigns and the lives they wreck: each episode moves between clinics, courtrooms, sales meetings and kitchen-table struggles, building a portrait of how a lie reached the whole country. The series is a sober, grounded prestige drama, heavy with dread and moral outrage, and its tone is bleak yet humane. Fans of Chernobyl, The Wire and The Big Short will find resonance in its layered look at institutional failure and corporate greed set in 1990s and 2000s America.

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