When the likes of Nancy Reagan were launching a war on drugs in the 1980s and telling kids to 'just say no', it was all about the illegal substances. As Bill Hicks put it not many years later and with barely perceptible sarcasm, 'it's OK to drink your drug: we meant those other drugs. Those untaxed drugs. Those are the ones that are bad for you.' The ones you drink or the ones you get prescribed to take by your doctor: they can both be very bad for you.

In the eight-part Dopesick, the focus is on America's rampant opioid crisis sparked by the development of OxyContin in the mid-90s, a pill that was deemed to bring instant relief to patients suffering severe pain and which, as is parroted many times in the drama by its swivel-eyed advocates, only causes addictive problems for less than 1% of users. As the series unfolds, shifting from the original hard sell campaign to have it made widely available at the flick of a doctor's signature to the immediate fall-out and later investigations and court cases, this is shown to be utterly fanciful.

The bad guys at play here are Big Pharma company Purdue which was largely controlled by the Sackler family. Dopesick arrives with perfect timing given that Purdue has only recently been declared bankrupt but the anger and despair caused by OxyContin will last long after the Sacklers have played their last hole of golf.

In a robust cast, Michael Keaton plays Appalachian medic Samuel Finnix, a grieving widower who is caught between maintaining his own ethical standards and being swayed by sweet talk about this 'miracle drug' from go-getting sales reps such as Billy Cutler (Will Poulter utilising an excellent US twang and those highly expressive eyebrows which seem to be permanently asking questions). Michael Stuhlbarg brings his own wonderfully expressive face (hangdog department) to the table as Richard Sackler whose hardball tactics to get OxyContin approved and on the market as quickly as possible shocks even his closest colleagues.

Meanwhile, Rosario Dawson is Bridget Meyer a drug-enforcement agent continually frustrated by the law's inability to reach the epidemic's real perpetrators; Kaitlyn Dever plays Betsy, a young miner whose need to ease her various agonies (physical and psychological) drag her towards an opioid reckoning; and Peter Sarsgaard is Rick Mountcastle, the Justice Department prosecutor determined to bring down Purdue and the Sacklers down.

The company and those pulling its strings may finally have had their influence blunted but the long and torturous struggle for justice on behalf of those devastated and destroyed by the OxyContin scandal will probably never be over. Dopesick, penned by Danny Strong from journalist Beth Macy's investigative book, helps keep the cause, and their voices, alive.

Dopesick starts on Disney+, Friday 12 November.