Introduction

Abstract

This book appreciates the artistry of Breaking Bad (AMC, 2008–2013). The series was prominent among a crop of expensive, ‘high end’ television serials from the US, the UK, and Europe that, from the 1990s onwards, drew frequent acclaim for extending and deepening television fiction’s narrative and stylistic palette and its range of related achievements. A common touchstone for this discourse was the adjective ‘cinematic’. As a term of both description and appreciative judgement, it was deployed with regularity in response to series such as, among others, The Sopranos (HBO, 1999–2007), Six Feet Under (HBO, 2001–2005), Mad Men (AMC, 2007–2015), Forbrydelsen (The Killing) (DR1, 2007–2012), Game of Thrones (HBO, 2010-), Hannibal (NBC, 2013-), and Top of the Lake (BBC Two, 2013). This suggested a view that the television dramas so described were aspiring to, and presumably in some cases realising, a ‘height’ of richness or sophistication of film style that had earlier been seen as the sole preserve of cinema. In Jason Jacobs’s words, the validation of some television dramas in terms of their so-called ‘cinematic’ qualities can be understood as responding to the idea that television fiction had been ‘textually anaemic when compared to film or literature’.¹Readily available statements by key practitioners, among them some of Breaking Bad’s central creative personnel, do not discount intentions to work within certain cinematic traditions. As well, the following chapters demonstrate how, in the case of Breaking Bad, certain films may often provide appropriate registers of comparison with the period’s television serials.