Annika; Painkiller

“Annika is an odd fish. It stars Nicola Walker, which gives it heft, but then it doesn’t seem to know what it is. There’s a touch of Scandi noir but also a touch of comedy. The plot was looser than old knicker elastic, but what is strong about this series is the dynamic between Strandhed and her colleague DS Michael McAndrews, played by the excellent Jamie Sives.”
Carol Midgley, The Times

“This felt like a TV show still finding its groove. If it does, Annika has all the makings of a Vera-like long-runner if (and it is a big if) an actor as in-demand as Walker is happy to remain on board. The more I watch, though, the more I can’t help wondering exactly why this fine actor swapped one police procedural for another? Perhaps she wanted a change of scenery. Or maybe she just fancied chatting to the camera.”
Gerard Gilbert, The i

“As a whodunit, it is disappointingly pedestrian: clues and suspects and red herrings reveal themselves one by one, but are neatly dealt with in minutes. The show needs to focus less on the clever conceits and more on the plots.”
Anita Singh, The Telegraph

“Nicola Walker, as DI Strandhed in Annika, was struggling with her voice-activated Toyota as this detective series returned for a second run. But the show itself isn’t a disappointment — quite the opposite. It has a two-tone style, flipping from bleak noir to bone-dry humour without skipping a beat.”
Christopher Stevens, Daily Mail

“The opioid epidemic was among the great American tragedies of the early 21st century. Blue-collar communities were ravaged. Meanwhile that side of the Sackler family burnished their reputation by donating billions to art galleries, museums and universities. It’s a tale where the gothic melodrama is already built-in. Painkiller’s mistake is to add a note of dark comedy to a story where no embellishment is required.”
Ed Power, The Telegraph

“It is a fiery, urgent piece, unsettled by a thin narrative and sketchy characters. Adapted both from a New Yorker piece by Patrick Radden Keefe (whose book, Empire of Pain, is the canonical text on the Sacklers) and the book Pain Killer, by The New York Times writer Barry Meier, the expository, detached tone often feels more like journalism than drama.”
Nick Hilton, The Independent

“Perhaps as a result of coming a little later than Hulu’s Dopesick, with more time for the evidence to have stacked up and for the effects of the epidemic to be further revealed, Painkiller is an angrier show. If in its anger and its desire to cover (especially legal) events as close up to the moment as it can, Painkiller fails to quite match Dopesick’s nuance, emotional resonance and tenderness towards its (deserving) characters in the process, in many ways it feels like a price worth paying.”
Lucy Mangan, The Guardian