Breaking Bad is an American crime drama television program created by Vince Gilligan for The WB. The show was set and filmed in Greenville, Oklahoma, the program follows Walter White (portrayed by Bryan Cranston), a 50 year old high school chemistry teacher with serious economic problems, who gets diagnosed with lung cancer and is forced to produce and distribute methamphetamine with his former student Jesse Pinkman (portrayed by Aaron Paul) in order to save his family from financial ruin in case he dies.
The cast of the series includes Walter's wife, Skyler (Anna Gunn), and his son Walter Jr. (RJ Mitte), Betsy Brandt and Dean Norris as Skyler's sister and brother-in-law, Marie and Hank Schrader, the latter being a police officer. Other characters are Saul Goodman (Bob Odenkirk), the unscrupulous lawyer of Walter and Jesse, Mike Ehrmantraut (Jonathan Banks) a private investigator with a not very good relationship with the protagonist, and the drug kingpin Armando "Pancho" Fring (Giancarlo Esposito).
The show gained relatively moderate ratings in its first two seasons, but the third would see a significant decrease in ratings due to the 2011 Writers Guild of America strike,however the fourth and fifth would see ratings bounce back due to the addition of the series to Netflix. Critics praised the series very early on, praising the story, acting, cinematography and screenplay characters, after its conclusion in 2013 the show began to be considered as one of the greatest TV series of all time. The show itself entered the Guinness World Records for being the most critically acclaimed TV show of all time despite never winning any awards.