Television series
The Trade
A five-part Showtime documentary that follows the opioid crisis from both ends of the pipeline: an Ohio family losing a daughter to addiction, an Oregon dealer, poppy farmers in Guerrero, and the cartel men moving the product north. It's patient, close-up, unhurried verité — no narrator moralizing at you, just people explaining, sometimes calmly, how they got here. Bleak and slow rather than sensational; best for viewers who want texture, not outrage.
If you liked this
Dopesick2021
Danny Strong's dramatization of Purdue Pharma's marketing machine gives the same crisis a courtroom spine and a starry cast, turning statistics into culpability with real narrative drive and fury.
But The dramatized outrage feels tidier and more satisfying than The Trade's messier, unresolved reality.
The Pharmacist2020
One grieving father's obsessive investigation into his son's overdose death becomes a genuinely gripping true-crime hunt, with the same small-town, big-pharma anger simmering underneath the whole thing.
But It narrows to a single case, so you lose The Trade's wider, multi-country scope.
The Crime of the Century2021no page yet
Alex Gibney's furious two-part indictment of Purdue Pharma and the Sackler family lays out the corporate machinery behind the crisis with prosecutorial clarity and controlled rage.
But It's focused squarely on boardrooms and lawsuits, with none of The Trade's street-level intimacy.
The wildcard
Something you would not have found on your own.
The Man with the Golden Arm1955
The Trade's addicts are the direct descendants of this film's junkie protagonist — same withdrawal shakes, same social shame, six decades and a moral panic apart.
Frank Sinatra plays a card dealer trying to kick heroin in Otto Preminger's censor-baiting melodrama — the first mainstream American film to put addiction and withdrawal on screen at all.
But It's stagy, dated melodrama with a jazzy score that announces its era loudly and often.
More like this (8)
Heroin(e)2017no page yet
A tight, forty-minute portrait of three women fighting Huntington, West Virginia's addiction crisis from the fire department, the courtroom, and the street — compassionate, fast, and quietly hopeful.
But It's short and more hopeful than The Trade, so the emotional impact is smaller.
Cartel Land2015
An Oscar-nominated look at vigilante groups fighting cartels on both sides of the US-Mexico border, shot with the same unflinching access to violence and desperation.
But It's about armed resistance more than addiction, so the register is angrier and more explosive.
Traffic2000
Soderbergh's Oscar-winning drama braids cartel bosses, DEA agents, and a suburban addict into one sprawling portrait of the drug war's futility — the fiction version of The Trade's structure.
But It's fiction, over two decades old now, and some of its politics feel dated.
Narcos2015
Pablo Escobar's rise and fall gives the cartel side of the story a propulsive, movie-star gloss, sharing The Trade's fascination with how supply chains curdle into empires.
But It's glamorous where The Trade is grim — closer to a thriller than testimony.
Ozark2017
A suburban family laundering cartel money turns the drug economy into a slow-burn thriller, just as curious about how ordinary people get swallowed by the machine.
But It's pure fiction and increasingly soapy — a glossier, pulpier animal entirely.
Breaking Bad2008
The gold standard drug drama, tracking a chemistry teacher's transformation into a meth kingpin with the same fascination in how ordinary lives get eaten alive by the trade.
But It's meth, not opioids, and its pleasures are dark comedy and craft, not documentary grief.
A Scanner Darkly2006
Dick wrote it as a eulogy for real friends lost to addiction; the animation externalizes the confusion and self-deception The Trade's subjects describe flatly in plain interviews.
Richard Linklater's rotoscoped adaptation of Philip K. Dick's addiction novel turns paranoia and dependency into shifting, hallucinatory animation — funny, sad, and unlike anything else here.
But The trippy visuals and sci-fi surveillance plot are a big tonal leap from straight documentary.
El Infierno2010no page yet
It's the same Guerrero-adjacent world The Trade's growers and bosses inhabit, but flipped into pitch-black comedy instead of sober testimony — the industry's absurdity played for laughs instead of grief.
This Mexican black comedy follows a deportee who drifts into narco work back home, playing the absurdity and violence of cartel life for satire rather than sorrow.
But It's in Spanish, runs over two hours, and its jokes about cartel life may sit uneasily given the subject.
People
Production
- Matthew HeinemanExecutive Producer