Painkiller is Netflix’s new TV smash hit but Hulu’s Dopesick is so much better

Two heartbreaking dramas about painkillers

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This week is all aboutPainkiller, a fictionalised drama series about the opioid crisis, which has jumped straight to the top of theNetflixtop 10 chart. Unfortunately, it’s not at the top of the critics' chart though.

Over on Rotten Tomatoes, it’s got a pretty unfortunate 51% critical rating and a 59% audience score. In comparison,Hulu’sDopesick, which is also centred on the same crisis, has a much better rating. Its critic score is 89% and its audience score is 94%.

So, what’sDopesickdoing right thatPainkilleris doing wrong? Having Emmy-winning and nominated actors and directors certainly helps. Multiple reviews have praised the “powerful” performances by Michael Keaton and Kaitlyn Dever, and while it’s not always an easy watch it’s a very worthwhile one.

Painkillerdoesn’t appear to be so successful. Part of that appears to be the decision to include heartbreaking fictionalised versions of real-life stories, which are important but which struck some critics as potentially exploitative and some others as jarring tonal changes. Peter Travers at ABC News was particularly damning: it “exaggerates like hell for so-called dramatic purposes”.

Meanwhile, Martin Carr of Yahoo! Movies put it bluntly: “Painkillerrarely measures up to the Emmy-winningDopesick”. If you’ve watchedPainkiller, then you may well bewowed byDopesickas it’s even more heartbreaking and anger-inducing. But if you’ve seenDopesick, it doesn’t sound like there’s a lot of point checking out Netflix’s take on the same terrible crisis.

What’s everyone watching on Netflix this week?

There are some welcome returns in this week’s Netflix global chart, including season two ofThe Lincoln Lawyerat number two (and season one at number eight), season eight of kids' showGabby’s Dollhouseat number three and the second season ofHeartstopperat number four. That’s the one everyone in my socials has been raving about, which is reflected in its 96% critic rating and 97% audience rating on Rotten Tomatoes. Writing in Empire, Tariq Raouf speaks for most when he says that it’s “an impeccable depiction of adolescent joy and queer love”.

It’s fair to say the critics aren’t quite so enamoured about number five in the chart,Fatal Seduction. The tale of a college professor’s dangerous infatuation was described by the Irish Independent as “bad television”, although Decider said it was a “perfect, satisfying binge if you want an addictive mystery with loads of sex and even more wild plot twists”.

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At number six we have season three ofThe Witcher, followed closely by the first season ofOm Nom Stories, a dark and savage insight into the human condition… Nope, it’s a cartoon featuring the main character from theCut The Ropevideo game. Skipping past season two of theLincoln Lawyerat eight, there’s season three of the rather lovelySweet Magnoliasat number nine in the chart, and tenth place goes to the first season of fish-out-of-water comedyFisk. The Fisk-out-of-water joke writes itself.

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Writer, broadcaster, musician and kitchen gadget obsessive Carrie Marshall has been writing about tech since 1998, contributing sage advice and odd opinions to all kinds of magazines and websites as well as writing more than a dozen books. Her memoir,Carrie Kills A Man, is on sale now and her next book, about pop music, is out in 2025. She is the singer in Glaswegian rock bandUnquiet Mind.

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