Breaking Bad is a neo-western criminal drama television series produced in the United States.¹⁾

Vince Gilligan created and produced it.²⁾

The program first aired on AMC for five seasons.³⁾

Albuquerque, New Mexico was the setting and location for this show.⁴⁾

Walter White (Bryan Cranston) is a poor and despondent high school chemistry teacher who is diagnosed with stage-3 lung cancer. White, together with his former student Jesse Pinkman (Aaron Paul), turns to a life of crime to protect his family's financial future before he dies, making and distributing crystalline methamphetamine.⁵⁾

The term is derived from the Southern slang phrase “breaking bad”. It implies to “raise hell” or to pursue a criminal career.⁶⁾

The series, according to Gilligan, depicted Walter's transition from a soft-spoken Mr. Chips into Scarface.⁷⁾

Anna Gunn and RJ Mitte play Walter's wife Skyler and son Walter, Jr., respectively, and Betsy Brandt and Dean Norris play Skyler's sister Marie Schrader and her husband Hank, a DEA agent.⁸⁾

Other cast members include Bob Odenkirk as sleazy lawyer Saul Goodman, Jonathan Banks as private investigator and fixer Mike Ehrmantraut, and Giancarlo Esposito as drug lord Gus Fring. Jesse Plemons plays the criminally ambitious Todd Alquist in the last season, while Laura Fraser plays Lydia Rodarte-Quayle, a corporate professional who discreetly manages Walter's global meth sales for her firm.⁹⁾

Breaking Bad is widely considered to be one of the best television shows of all time. It was one of the most-watched cable shows on American television by the time the series finale aired.¹⁰⁾

The show won multiple awards. 16 Primetime Emmy Awards, eight Satellite Awards, two Golden Globe Awards, two Peabody Awards, two Critics' Choice Awards, and four Television Critics Association Awards are among the honors.¹¹⁾

For his leading performance, Cranston won the Primetime Emmy Award for Outstanding Lead Actor in a Drama Series four times.¹²⁾

Aaron Paul received three Primetime Emmy Awards for Outstanding Supporting Actor in a Drama Series.¹³⁾

Anna Gunn has received two Primetime Emmy Awards for Outstanding Supporting Actress in a Drama Series.¹⁴⁾

Breaking Bad was named the most highly praised program of all time by Guinness World Records in 2013.¹⁵⁾

Better Call Saul, a prequel series starring Bob Odenkirk and Jonathan Banks, premiered on AMC on February 8, 2015.¹⁶⁾

On October 11, 2019, El Camino: A Breaking Bad Movie, starring Aaron Paul, will be released on Netflix and in select cinemas.¹⁷⁾

Gilligan envisioned a series in which the protagonist would become the adversary. Gilligan thought that displaying a character's whole extreme transition over the course of a television program was a hazardous notion that would be difficult to present without additional significant aspects to back it up, such as outstanding photography and acting. The idea came to him while discussing their present jobs with fellow X-Files writer Thomas Schnauz. They jokingly suggested that they build a “meth lab in the back of an RV and [drive] across the nation manufacturing meth and generating money”.¹⁸⁾

Gilligan submitted the show's premise and pilot to Sony Pictures Television after scripting it. They got really interested in assisting with it. Sony set up talks with several cable networks.¹⁹⁾

This was passed over by Showtime. They had already begun showing Weeds, a sitcom with premise parallels to Breaking Bad. His producers persuaded him that the show was unique enough to be successful. Gilligan subsequently remarked that if he had heard about Weeds earlier, he would not have pursued the concept. Other networks, including HBO and TNT, passed on the idea, but FX finally expressed interest and began preliminary conversations about producing the pilot.²⁰⁾

At the same time, FX was developing Dirt, a female-centric criminal drama series, and with three existing male-centric shows on the network, FX passed on Breaking Bad in favor of Dirt.²¹⁾

One of Gilligan's representatives met with AMC's director of original programming, Jeremy Elice. He was seeking for new original series to complement their impending Mad Men. Elice was piqued. A meeting was quickly scheduled between Gilligan, Elice, and two programming execs. Gilligan was pessimistic about the encounter, believing that it would only put him off. Instead, all three expressed strong interest, and the discussion resulted in an agreement outlining how AMC would buy the rights from FX and put the pilot into production.It took roughly a year after this meeting for Sony to secure the rights with AMC and begin production.²²⁾

Breaking Bad was named one of the top ten television series by the American Film Institute in 2008, 2010, 2011, 2012, and 2013.²³⁾

According to a 2015 Hollywood Reporter poll of 2,800 actors, producers, directors, and other industry professionals, Breaking Bad is their second favorite program.²⁴⁾

Rolling Stone named it third on its list of the 100 Greatest TV Shows of All Time in 2016.²⁵⁾

Breaking Bad premiered on the same night as a pivotal game in the NFL playoffs in 2008. AMC made this choice on purpose in order to catch the adult male viewership immediately following the projected finish of the game. The game, however, went into overtime, cutting into the show's time slot across much of America. As a result, only roughly 1.4 million people saw the pilot.²⁶⁾

Because of the continuing writers' strike, the first season did not gather as many viewers as projected. However, viewership climbed in future seasons, bucking the normal declining pattern seen in most serialized programming.²⁷⁾

The fourth season's ratings grew even more since the previous seasons had been posted to Netfli ahead to airing, increasing interest in the show. Breaking Bad is regarded as the first such show to see a renewed surge of popularity as a result of its availability on Netflix.²⁸⁾

The series finale attracted over 10.3 million viewers over the second half of the final season.²⁹⁾

In 2015, the series' creator, Vince Gilligan, officially urged that fans refrain from reenacting a scene in which Walter violently tosses a pizza on his roof when his wife refuses to allow him in.³⁰⁾