Matthew Broderick hams it up as real-life pill baron Richard Sackler in Netflix’s new hit PainKiller

Painkiller proves the fascination and horror the US opioid crisis induces is as strong as ever. But you might need sedating after watching Matthew Broderick ham it up this badly.

Matthew Broderick as Richard Sackler in Painkiller. Picture: Netflix

How often should we count our blessings, look to the heavens and proclaim “Thank God we are not Americans”?

Oh that marvel of a country has given the world so much – freedom in some cases, innovation in many cases, and us devotees of drama cannot fault it in the film, TV or theatre department.

But between the enfeebled old man in the White House, the mad old man who wants back in the Oval Office, the guns, the polarisation, the whole lot of it – you can’t help but think sometimes that George III was hard done by and George Washington wasn’t such a good bet.

Then there’s the opioids.

Australia cannot claim any clean record when it comes to drugs, even prescription drugs, but at least there’s a usually sensible, usually functioning, on-the-whole transparent drug regulator in this country.

And we have avoided the en masse addiction to OxyContin and other over-the-counter opioids which has destroyed entire towns and communities in America.

There have been so many documentaries and even a whole TV series already about OxyContin and the Sackler family who made millions pumping it out, and then refused to deal with the consequences of their seriously flawed drug on millions of Americans.

Clearly the fascination and the horror the opioid crisis induces is as strong as ever, with new docudrama Painkiller climbing to the top of Netflix’s most viewed charts in the past week.

Matthew Broderick – as far away from his Ferris Bueller days as you can imagine – plays the real-life former head of major drug firm Purdue Pharma, Richard Sackler.

Make no mistake, Mr Sackler is the villain of this story – morally blind, narcissistic, manipulative, mean-spirited.

And there’s enough court evidence – via memos he sent to staff and lawyers telling them to label addicts to his drug as criminals – to suggest this portrayal of him in Painkiller is not far off the mark.

But while Broderick is aiming for Richard III with this performance, he more often than not comes off more like Scrooge McDuck.

Matthew Broderick as Richard Sackler in Painkiller

There is not a hint of moral grey in Painkiller – however dreary the cinematography is – and Broderick’s portrayal of this wicked pharma big boss is incredibly hammy.

The terrible ageing prosthetics and the constant conversations with his dead dad (Clark Gregg) certainly don’t help.

But Broderick’s grotesque, sometimes surreal, portrayal of this real-life pharmaceutical baron seems to take away from the seriousness of the topic at hand.

Painkiller’s intertwining of several storylines designed to show the horror of the opioid epidemic and Purdue Pharma’s role in it also serves to confuse, rather than distil, the horror of this problem.

There’s a mechanic (Friday Night Lights’ heart-throb Taylor Kitsch) whose life spirals after getting addicted to the OxyContin he starts taking after a horrific work injury. And there’s an amoral Purdue saleswoman (West Duchovny) who slowly starts to realise the damage she’s doing.

Narrating the whole thing is a highly cynical investigator (Orange Is the New Black star Uzo Aduba) who can’t get over her role in a botched case against Purdue – which was partly influenced by one Rudy Giuliani.

All of these three performances are more nuanced than Broderick and sometimes quite affecting, especially Kitsch’s as the small town addict who represents so many broken lives in America’s rural communities.

But Painkiller just can’t quite hit the mark. It knows it wants to tell the world how dastardly Purdue and Sackler were, and how rotten the opioid epidemic is. But after that, it’s muddled and meandering and sometimes a bit of a parody of itself.

There’s much better drama that could be extracted from this most American of modern horror stories.

Talking of killers, everyone’s favourite podcasting detectives are back in the third season of Only Murders in the Building.

Whoever came up with the concept of making a mystery-solving super team with Steve Martin and Martin Short – two of the zaniest, old school comics in Hollywood – and the incredibly nonchalant Selena Gomez is a genius.

Gomez – a millennial pop sensation and the most followed woman on Instagram – cannot act. There are marble statues of Queen Victoria around the place that emit more feeling than her.

But when you put this chill-as-hell, glacial young woman up with the vaudeville-to-their-boots Martin and Short, the expressionless and the ham seems to cancel each other out. It’s brilliant.

Only Murders In the Building

And of course, who doesn’t love a mystery? Only Murders in the Building has heralded a great comeback for the murder whodunit, showcased most recently in the brilliant series Poker Face with Natasha Lyonne.

So is the magic still there for series three, or are the old hams and the pop girl getting tired? Definitely the former.

Having already solved two gruesome deaths in their gorgeous West Side Manhattan apartment complex, the podcasters are on hiatus from crime-busting and are focused on opening a big new musical on Broadway produced by Short and starring Martin.

Of course this plot device allows a few showtune parodies – thanks to Apple’s Schmigadoon! for bringing the musical back to streaming – and quite a few starry cameos.

And no one is starrier than Meryl Streep.

It’s easy to think Streep coming on the show is a slight sign of decadence, of losing one’s roots and giving in to Hollywood. You can often tell a show is too popular and weary when it plays the cameo card. But she’s no bit player in Only Murders in the Building 3; Streep is essential.

She plays an out-of-work actor who has never got it together. A woman with plenty of talent who always blows it on opening night.

You can imagine how this can go wrong – Meryl bloody Streep playing a screw-up who never made it? Can the grande dame actually play that having lived such an exalted life for so long?

But what she manages to do – especially in one musical number later in the series – is incredibly affecting and almost tear inducing.

Anyone who’s just missed their chance – for a job or a lover or anything – will get the shivers when they see Streep.