Breaking Good

'Breaking Bad' shouldn't have been that successful. Who really wants to watch a programme about a middle aged Chemistry Teacher and a former stoner student of his 'cooking' crystal meth? Yet it  works. The series has us constantly coming back to moral dilemmas, brilliant writing and the bad luck of the key characters which seems to be forever 'breaking bad'. Bryan Cranston plays Walter White as a tortured soul, trying to fund his cancer treatment and keep his family on the road by going into the drugs trade. You already have a classic writing archetype right there; 'fish out of water'. Aaron Paul is superb as his dipshit but usually likeable accomplice, Jesse Pinkman. Anna Gunn, as White's wife Skyler, is a strong female character, doing her best in recessionary America, coping with her Husband's cancer and here son's cerebal palsy. New Mexico is an uncredited star in the series; the scenery is stunning, and the frontier wilderness symbolises the unchartered territory White now has to walk down. There is humour, violence, tenderness, great characterisation and some excellent dialogue. If the extended TV Series Arc is the new 'Movie', 'Breaking Bad' can righteously be said to take its place in this canon. But the real find for 'thetvreviewguy' so far is Bob Odenkirk as the seedy, corrupt lawyer Saul Goodman (again, great use of surnames by the writers); worth watching 'Breaking Bad' just for him alone.