The creators of the six chapters of “Lethal Medicine,” a powerful condemnation of pharmaceutical company Purdue Pharma and its flagship drug, opioid-family pain reliever OxyContin, cover their hypothetical responsibility by involving relatives of real victims of the powerfully addictive drug that claims “While the series is based on real events,” some of the characters and dialogue are the result of fiction, something perfectly understandable and doubtfully justifiable. Sounds like a legal recommendation.
In any case, the series is a perfect example of corporate gluttony: Anything is possible when the income statement is positive, and it should have been when the US Supreme Court ruled over the bankruptcy agreement that the drug company filed in 2019 had overturned a year-long action to protect members of the Sackler family, its owners, from the lawsuits of thousands of opioid addiction victims in exchange for $6,000 million in compensation. Of course, the pain reliever’s tremendous sales and profits would not have been possible without the collaboration of hundreds, perhaps thousands, of doctors who have prescribed it without hesitation.
A chilling fact: The OxyContin death toll is estimated at 500,000, a fact well known to Purdue Pharma President Richard Sackler, played by an intrepid Matthew Broderick. We’re assuming he, too, is keen to regain his interpretive autonomy and stop being “Sarah Jessica Parker’s husband.” Lethal Medicine is a notable Netflix-offered series from Micah Fitzerman-Blue and Noah Harpster, and that with the self-critical ability that the very powerful American audiovisual industry sometimes displays and of which it has already offered examples in several series and feature films.
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