Breaking Bad changed television forever, almost from its very start. The crime drama (although that is a woefully lacking descriptor) first premiered on AMC in 2008, just months after Mad Men‘s debut. The two shows made AMC a serious player in the world of pre-streaming prestige TV, and both, but especially Breaking Bad, would influence every TV drama that came after. The shows featured here are a mix; some premiered before Breaking Bad was even conceptualized, while others lived in its shadow. Not all of them are strictly focused on crime, but what they all have in common is the beautiful union of plot movement and character development working in tandem.
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Maybe you just finished a marathon of Breaking Bad on Netflix and are wondering where to go from here. Netflix would probably recommended Ozark next, because that’s one of their most prized originals, and also a show that has been hailed as a descendant of Breaking Bad. A lot of other similar lists will throw up Better Call Saul, the prequel show in the Breaking Bad universe. This list tries to avoid the choices you’ve probably heard of and maybe even watched before, though. There may be some shows you’ve never heard of, as well as some international programs that get left out of the American-centric prestige TV conversation. Let’s break bad, shall we?
Boardwalk Empire
First things first: it’s almost impossible to top Breaking Bad for consistent quality, season after season. Even Mad Men had its shakier moments. However, Boardwalk Empire almost feels like HBO decided, on a dare, to put the two shows in a blender, add a splash of their critical darling (The Sopranos), and give Steve Buscemi the meaty role he always deserves. Over its five seasons, Boardwalk Empire (2010-2015) was like a boardwalk roller coaster: often rough, sometimes unenjoyable, but always a thrill. It had a heavy hitter in Martin Scorsese directing the pilot, and it also made both Michael Stuhlbarg and Michael Shannon beloved character actors, arguably. Kelly Macdonald’s Margaret was both Nucky Thompson’s (Buscemi) love interest and narrative foil, adding both fullness of heart and a lot of heart to lose at the same time. Boardwalk Empire was rarely perfect, but it offered an enticing aesthetic and enough old-school gangster twists to keep a viewer entertained.
Boardwalk Empire can be streamed in its entirety on Max.
Cardinal
If there’s any country that’s totally confident in their television making, it’s Canada. They are coolly consistent; some really awful crimes can be happening on-screen (or discreetly off-screen), and their protagonists still have a sense of humor about it. If anything, Cardinal (2017-2020) may have taken itself more seriously than most Canadian TV, but that didn’t mean it wasn’t still just a little… off in a Canadian way. Billy Campbell plays the titular Detective John Cardinal, who seems to specialize in the most brutal crimes Algonquin Bay can handle, and he’s definitely a detective with an edge. It’s a quiet, subtle one, though… he really is closer to early Walter White than, say, Elliot Stabler. He’s supported by Detective Lisa Delorme (Karine Vanesse) who is as icy as he is broody. While the crimes get a lot of attention, their interactions make for a give and take that make four seasons well worth watching.
Cardinal can be streamed in its entirety on Hulu.
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Endeavour
Part of what made Breaking Bad so appealing was the chance it gave audiences to see a character evolve over five seasons of tightly-made TV. We didn’t really know Walter White that well, and we didn’t know where he was going, which made Breaking Bad more of a thrill ride than a outright tragedy. Endeavour flips that idea on its head. Because it’s the prequel show to the long-running Inspector Morse from the 80s/90s, and because it also draws upon the books by Colin Dexter that created the beloved grouchy but cultured detective, we know the ending well before a fresh-faced Endeavour Morse (Shaun Evans) glances up in the pilot. He’s going to be an old before his time, alcoholic, lonely, career detective: the trick of Endeavour (2012-2023) as a show is making that transformation seem both inevitable and impossible. It’s a show keenly interested in a thrilling mystery as much as the tragedy it’s dead set on telling — and with 9 seasons of 3-6 hour and a half episodes a piece, it’s well worth the journey.
Endeavour can be streamed in its entirety through PBS Passport, or through the PBS Masterpiece add-on on Prime.
Justified
This is probably the most obvious choice on this list, but so be it. If Boardwalk Empire was HBO’s salvo at AMC, Justified was FX’s chance to get in the game. It worked! Raylan Givens (Timothy Olyphant) might be a man of the law, but you can’t really say he’s a lawful man. Justified got six seasons to tell its tale, and it consistently did it well… especially with such great support like Walton Goggins as Boyd Crowder. If Breaking Bad was distinctly a story for our unruly times, Justified (2010-2015) asked what happened if an old-fashioned figure (like Raylan) had to live and work in those same unruly times.
Justified can be streamed in its entirety on Hulu.
Perry Mason
Perry Mason being as controversial as it was when it debuted is still a little befuddling; it never promised to be a reboot of the iconic original (which ran from 1957-1966), and its creators emphasized their focus on the original books over Raymond Burr’s take on the defense lawyer. Maybe it was because it was hard to see Matthew Rhys’s lean, hungry take on the icon actually becoming the icon. Maybe it just didn’t get enough of a chance. We’ll never know — Perry Mason only got two seasons to try and make some magic happen, and while magic did happen, it came into a world where everyone has a TV show and even a legacy character can’t keep a show afloat alone. But if Breaking Bad is a modern take on noir, this is a good introduction to what old noir was, but in Technicolor.
Perry Mason can be streamed in its entirety on Max.
Slow Horses
A lot of these shows, it can be argued, are about stopping crime, rather than doing crime, like Breaking Bad emphasizes. That’s true. A lot of television shows prefer to stop crime rather than do crime. And while the bad spies of Slow Horses save the day more often than not, they never exactly do it with their hands completely clean. The ongoing Apple TV+ series started in 2022, and has already given us four straight seasons of incredible thriller television. Gary Oldman’s Jackson Lamb wouldn’t be terribly out of place in Breaking Bad, if they’d for some reason had an arc set in the UK (that or Lamb gets temporarily exiled to New Mexico). Lamb’s dynamic with River Cartwright (Jack Lowden) is somewhat reminiscent of Walter and Jesse’s wild relationship. In spycraft, having an apprentice isn’t always a wise idea, and Lamb doesn’t so much embrace River as keep him within earshot (so he can hear when River does something terribly wrong). Slow Horses is the only show on this list that is still actively airing. Its fifth season is due to come out sometime this year. You can watch it all on Apple TV+.
Wiseguy
You can, and probably should, draw a direct line of succession between Wiseguy (1987-1990), The Sopranos, and Breaking Bad. There were still a lot of things you couldn’t do on TV in the late 80s, and Wiseguy is a reflection of that. But it flips the cop drama script up to that point: characters would go undercover maybe once or twice in a series run, but to have a character keep his cover for a whole show? That was new. Vinnie Terranova (Ken Wahl) lived in a newly serialized story, supervised by Jonathan Banks (who Breaking Bad fans will of course recognize). Vinnie had to do things that were not always ‘good’ to maintain his cover, and in the process, began a domino chain of television that includes Breaking Bad.
Wiseguy can be streamed on Peacock or Tubi, as well as some other free streaming TV services.
What show would you recommend to someone who loved Breaking Bad? Have you seen any of the shows on this list? Leave a comment and let us know!
