Breaking Bad was a modest cable show until Netflix found it an audience
A chemistry teacher with lung cancer turns drug manufacturer in Albuquerque: the premise sounded bleak, and early ratings were modest. Then the first seasons landed on Netflix, viewers binged their way in, and the finale became one of the most watched cable episodes of its era. Sixteen Emmys followed.
Vince Gilligan created the series for AMC, and it ran from January 20, 2008, to September 29, 2013, across five seasons and 62 episodes. It was shot and set in Albuquerque, New Mexico, and critics now routinely place it among the best television ever made. Its story unfolds over just two years in the characters' lives, from 2008 to 2010.
Bryan Cranston plays Walter White, an underpaid teacher who also works shifts at a car wash. Diagnosed with stage-three lung cancer shortly after turning 50, he decides to secure his family's future by cooking methamphetamine with a former pupil, Jesse Pinkman, played by Aaron Paul. They start in a mobile lab, and Walter's unusually pure blue product becomes prized. Under the alias Heisenberg he collides with rival gangs, distributors, Mexican cartels and, most awkwardly, his brother-in-law Hank Schrader of the DEA. Cranston said he wanted to shift from comedy into drama without losing the humour, while Paul saw Jesse as lost rather than bad and likened the partnership to The Odd Couple.
Reviews grew warmer as the show went on. The first season was well received, but it was the later ones, above all the final season, that drew near-universal praise for acting, writing, direction and camera work. Viewing figures jumped once Netflix carried the show before its fourth season and rose again for the last run of episodes in 2013.
The haul of awards was enormous: 16 Primetime Emmys, two Golden Globes, two Peabodys and a BAFTA. Cranston won lead actor four times, Paul took supporting actor three times and Anna Gunn, who played Walter's wife Skyler, won twice. The world kept expanding with Better Call Saul, built around Bob Odenkirk's lawyer, which ran from 2015 to 2022, and the Netflix film El Camino, released on October 11, 2019.
Source: Breaking Bad
