183 Best TV Shows Similar to Breaking Bad (Page 5)

Creating an engaging plot-driven primetime soap is a delicate process, despite how big and loud such shows tend to be. Burn through too many storylines too early, and you end up with, well, a Ryan Murphy series. On the other hand, take too much time to toss out the red meat, and the audience drifts, tired of potential with no execution. Continue Reading →

“Emotionally manipulative” is a criticism of television and film I’ve always struggled with evaluating. If it is doing its job, any show or movie should emotionally manipulate you, at least a bit. It’s why you can go into a dark cineplex feeling a bit in the grip of the blahs and emerge high on the story of Nic Cage and his best swine friend. So know, when I declare Dear Edward “emotionally manipulative as hell,” that’s not necessarily a bad thing. Continue Reading →

Grief hits us all differently. For therapist Jimmy Laird (Jason Segel, also one of three Shrinking creators), the death of his wife led him to a year-long bender. The audience encounters him on his last night of drinking, drugs, and sex workers whom he pays not for sex but just to hang out with him. His neighbor Liz’s (Christa Miller) repeated pleas to stop waking her and her husband Derek (Ted McGinley) in the middle of the night with his “parties” finally break through. Continue Reading →

When last we left Kingstown, MI, the town was recovering from a brutal prison riot that left plenty of guards and scores of prisoners dead. Mike McLusky (Jeremy Renner) has proven nowhere near the adept fixer his deceased brother (Kyle Chandler) was. The town paid the price. Continue Reading →

In Season 2, Hunters remains dedicated to exploring whether vengeance and justice can ever be one and the same. Continue Reading →

Koala Man may be a brand-new Hulu cartoon, but viewers sitting down to watch its first season may feel like they’ve stumbled onto a rerun. The show’s steady stream of apocalyptic threats and graphic deaths echoes executive producer Justin Roiland’s Rick and Morty, and its animation style is disappointingly derivative of Bento Box Entertainment’s adult cartoons (Hoops or Brickleberry, for instance, though Aussie studio Princess Bento produced Koala Man itself). It may be the only small-screen program dedicated to a middle-aged dude in a koala mask fighting crime, but Koala Man is far too derivative for its own good.  Continue Reading →

You gotta love a good gimmick. Whether it’s the current 4DX offerings in theatres (which harkens back to the “Tingler” era of Castle silliness) or Netflix dalliances with “Choose Your Own Adventure”-esque stories like Black Mirror’s “Bandersnatch,” or Kimmy Schmidt, there’s an undeniable charm in centering the device. Kaleidoscope is the latest entry in these sorts of experiments. It offers an eight episode heist story that audiences can theoretically watch in any order. Only the episode titled “White” has a specific place in the order: last. That's a recommendation this reviewer firmly endorses. Continue Reading →

As conceived in the 1987 Tom Clancy novel The Hunt for Red October, Jack Ryan was an antidote to the typical hypermasculine action hero that had gripped pop culture. Despite a tour in the Marines, he was an intellect-first guy who only ended up in the field because he outthinks everyone else. Unfortunately, Tom Clancy’s Jack Ryan season 3 is a reminder that that version of the character ceased to exist long ago. Continue Reading →

From The Flight Attendant to The Rookie, there’s no shortage of comedy action series, flipping the script of formulaic procedurals and infusing a dose of relatable, if often quirky, characters as leads. Netflix looks to add to the roster with the new series The Recruit, which follows a dashing but stumbly new CIA lawyer Owen (Noah Centineo), as he falls deeper into internal espionage. While The Recruit gets muddled with an unbalanced tone, Centineo jumps in with enough charm and comedy to keep viewers coming back. Continue Reading →

Paolo (Colin Donnell), a mob fixer, is used to being the smartest person in the room. However, sometimes even the most intelligent guy makes dumb decisions. For Paolo, that begins with killing a mob boss’s son to save his own life. Then he makes that worse by going on the run with the boss’s money. But he's not done yet. Next up, he gets robbed by, of all people, a depressed Reverend, Mackenzie Boyd (P.J. Byrne), who decides to live it up on Paolo’s dime. Finally, he completes the progression of bad ideas by taking Boyd’s new job in the small town of oceanside town of Clump. There, he reasons, he can finally regain control of his life's wreckage. Continue Reading →

“The Big Aristotle.” “The Diesel.” “Shaq Daddy.” Shaquille O’Neal goes by many names, but above all these, he’s simply “Shaq.” Making Shaq a household name wasn’t a given at first. Of course, being 7’1” helps. That alone doesn’t make becoming a giant among the biggest names in basketball an easy task though. Shaq covers the career of the mammoth basketball legend in a four-part documentary, complete with in-depth coverage of the man’s personal and professional life, while handled with an up-close, in-your-face approach. That’s the Shaquille O’Neal way.  Continue Reading →

Jenna Ortega is having quite the year. Between the success of Ti West’s brilliant slasher X and leading the new Scream franchise, she’s poised to become our next reigning Queen of Creepy. This looks even more likely now as she brings the definitive goth teen to life in Netflix’s Wednesday, helmed by Tim Burton. Continue Reading →

In pop culture, The Mafia is as intertwined with New York as it is with Italian heritage. As a result, the idea of having a show about the Mafia taking place outside of the East Coast is novel. That’s especially if it takes place in an explicitly un-NYC location like Tulsa. Unfortunately, the premise of having a Mafioso in Oklahoma is the only original thing about Taylor Sheridan’s (Yellowstone) latest crime drama, Tulsa King.  Continue Reading →

When Beckett Mariner (Tawny Newsome) began this season, she harbored nothing but mistrust for Starfleet and resolved to rescue her mother all by herself, even as it turned out Mom didn’t need saving. Now, at season’s end, Mariner returns, ready to fight for both the people and the idea of Starfleet, and she enlists the help of her comrades and colleagues to rescue Captain Freeman (Dawnn Lewis) in a moment where she could really use the save. Continue Reading →

There’s no easy way to live your dream. But if you and your quirky, goth friends can open up a business that conjures up fake macabre events for money, it becomes a very real possibility. HBO’s Los Espookys, one of the best shows of 2019, returns after a long COVID hiatus with a second season abundant with the show’s trademark deadpan humor, random visual gags, and, above all, its big heart. Continue Reading →

Welcome to Flatch feels, in many ways, like the kind of show that would’ve survived four seasons in the middle of NBC’s Thursday night lineup. It wasn’t your favorite, you didn’t know anyone who’d call it their favorite, but as part of a block programming where you loved the anchors, one could do a lot worse. It’s not terrible, it has its moments, but it isn’t exactly anything special either. Continue Reading →

It’s a familiar scene. A writer finds success on the independent scene with something artistic and boundary-pushing. They take a meeting and the Hollywood content machine devours them. The difference in Reboot is the writer, Hannah (Rachel Bloom), has bought into the system without hesitation. She’s after something far more compelling than art or commerce. She seeks revenge. Continue Reading →

Whether it’s the cutthroat business world of Succession to the fantasy universe of House of the Dragon, television audiences are here to see the chaos and drama of families living and working with each other. Looking to add to the mix is Fox’s newest drama Monarch, from writer Melissa Hilfers. Continue Reading →

Everyone’s had that “wedding season” experience. You meet a stranger at the start of the summer and have a great time flirting—perhaps more—with them by the bar and on the dance floor. It feels like a fun one-time thing, but then you keep running into each other at every other reception over the next few months. Before you know it, you’re having a full-fledged affair and running from the police because you’re both suspected of murdering an entire wedding party. You know, standard mid-20s wedding season fun. Continue Reading →

There’s been a recent boom in the television sphere of hybrid comedy/documentary series, ranging from altered talk shows (The Eric Andre Show) to pranks with the pals (Jackass) and cringe “reality” series (The Rehearsal). Looking to join the ranks is Netflix’s new show Chad and JT Go Deep, a comedic mockumentary series that flirts with cringe comedy, advocates for important causes, and aims to make us all members of “stokenation.” Continue Reading →

The Patient’s Dr. Alan Strauss (Steve Carrell) is a man of ritual. One can tell it from how he cuts his fruit, interacts with clients, and even walks through his home. The deliberate editing from Amanda Pollack and Daniel A. Valverde in the pilot help emphasize this point. Ritual upon ritual surrounds him. Continue Reading →