From schoolteacher to villain
Breaking Bad was created by Vince Gilligan, who had spent years writing for The X-Files, and it ran from 2008 to 2013. He described his idea as turning Mr Chips, the gentle schoolteacher of an old novel, into Scarface, a gangster: over five series, a mild chemistry teacher called WALTER WHITE becomes a ruthless criminal known as HEISENBERG. The title comes from an expression in the American South, to break bad, meaning to go wrong or turn to crime, and the opening titles pick out letters as symbols from the periodic table, such as Br for bromine and Ba for barium. It is a dark drama made for adults, with violence and crime at its heart, so this grid, which holds only names and places, is for grown-up fans. Our sci-fi shows page covers the series where Gilligan learned his trade.
Bryan Cranston, who plays Walter, was best known before it for playing the bumbling dad in the family sitcom Malcolm in the Middle, and some television bosses doubted he could play someone frightening. He won four Emmy awards for the role.
A city better known for balloons
The show was first meant to be set in Riverside, California, but it moved to Albuquerque in New Mexico because the state offered film-makers money to shoot there, and the desert landscapes became part of its look. Albuquerque is better known for its hot-air balloon festival, as our hot-air balloons page explains, but the show brought a different kind of tourist. The house used as the White family home is a real private house, and its owners eventually built a fence after fans kept throwing pizzas onto the roof, copying a famous scene.
The fried chicken restaurant Los POLLOS Hermanos, run in the story by the calm and menacing GUS FRING, was filmed at a real restaurant in the city. In 2022 life-size bronze statues of Walter and his partner JESSE PINKMAN were unveiled at the city's convention centre.
A partner who stayed, and a record
Jesse Pinkman, played by Aaron Paul, was supposed to be written out near the end of the first series. The writers liked the actor and the character so much that they kept him, and Jesse became the show's heart. The first series was also cut short, to just seven episodes, by a writers' strike in 2007 and 2008, and Gilligan later said the strike probably saved Jesse, since it came before the episode where he would have gone.
The show's makers worked with scientists to make the laboratory scenes look convincing, but deliberately left out or changed key steps so that nothing shown on screen could be copied.
In 2013 Guinness World Records named Breaking Bad the highest-rated television series of all time, based on reviews. Its lawyer, SAUL GOODMAN, got his own prequel series, Better Call Saul, which ran from 2015 to 2022 and was almost as highly praised. The grid also holds SKYLER White, Walter's wife; HANK SCHRADER, his brother-in-law, who works for the drug police, and Hank's wife MARIE; TUCO, BADGER and the rest of the cast; and the words CRYSTAL, COOK, LAB, CARTEL, RICIN and EMPIRE from the story.