TV Shows Like Breaking Bad
If you like Breaking Bad, here are 10 similar TV shows — each with its current AI renewal verdict, so you can see which are still going and which have been cancelled.
AMC · Drama · Breaking Bad is ended
Breaking Bad works because it is a character study disguised as a crime thriller. Walter White's transformation from a put-upon chemistry teacher into a calculating drug lord is gradual enough that viewers keep finding reasons to stay on his side long past the point where they should have stopped. The New Mexico setting is more than backdrop. The desert light, the strip malls, the sense of geographic isolation all give the show a specific texture that feels earned rather than decorative. What the show does better than almost anything else is sustain dread. You know things are going to get worse, and they always do, and somehow that makes it impossible to look away.
The best shows like Breaking Bad
1. Better Call Saul
If Breaking Bad left you wanting more time in Albuquerque with morally compromised people making catastrophically bad decisions, Better Call Saul delivers that and then some. Jimmy McGill's slow drift into becoming Saul Goodman is structured the same way Walt's transformation is, one rationalisation at a time, and the show has the same gift for making you root for someone you know you shouldn't. It also develops Mike Ehrmantraut and the cartel threads in ways that reward anyone who paid close attention to Breaking Bad.
Stream on Netflix, Netflix Standard with Ads
Ended0%
2. Tulsa King
Tulsa King is a lighter watch than Breaking Bad but it shares the same basic setup of a man past his prime deciding he still has something to build. Dwight Manfredi reassembling a criminal operation in a place that does not understand him has real fish-out-of-water charm, and the show is funnier than you might expect from the premise. It scratches the neo-western itch without the existential dread, which can be exactly what you need after Breaking Bad's relentless tension.
Stream on Paramount Plus Premium, Paramount Plus Essential, Paramount Plus Apple TV Channel , Paramount+ Amazon Channel
Likely Renewed95%
3. Animal Kingdom
Animal Kingdom shares Breaking Bad's interest in how crime warps family loyalty and how ordinary-seeming people justify doing genuinely terrible things. The Cody family dynamics are messy and specific in a way that feels true, and the show does not flinch from the violence that holds the whole operation together. Fans of Walt's increasingly dangerous domestic life will find a similar unease here, just relocated to the California coast.
Stream on Netflix, Amazon Prime Video, Netflix Standard with Ads, Amazon Prime Video with Ads
Ended0%
4. Snowfall
Snowfall covers territory that Breaking Bad only gestures at, the full ecosystem of the American drug trade, this time through the crack epidemic hitting Los Angeles in the early 1980s. Like Breaking Bad, it follows multiple characters on different sides of the same criminal economy and watches them get pulled deeper in than they ever intended. The period detail is sharp, and the show has the same willingness to let consequences land hard.
Stream on Hulu
Ended0%
5. Narcos
Narcos operates on a larger canvas than Breaking Bad but the obsessive, self-mythologising drug lord at its centre will feel familiar to anyone who watched Walter White's ego expand to fill every room. The show's documentary style gives it a sense of inevitability that works the same way Breaking Bad's dramatic irony does. It is grittier and more geographically sprawling, but the pull of watching someone build a criminal empire until it collapses under its own weight is identical.
Stream on Netflix, Netflix Standard with Ads
Ended0%
More on shows like Breaking Bad
Fans of Breaking Bad tend to want a few specific things from whatever they watch next. They want a protagonist whose moral collapse is the engine of the story, not just a side effect. They want crime that feels consequential, where money and power have real costs attached to them. They want writing that trusts the audience to keep up, and direction that understands atmosphere. A sense of dark humor helps too. Walter White's story is, among other things, genuinely funny in the most uncomfortable way, and shows that can hold that tension tend to resonate the same way.
The recommendations here cover a lot of ground. Better Call Saul is the most obvious starting point and the most rewarding, a prequel and spin-off that turns out to be its own kind of tragedy. Narcos takes the cartel world global and grounds it in documented history. Snowfall digs into the American crack epidemic from the street level up, with Los Angeles in the 1980s as its setting. Animal Kingdom moves the crime-family drama to Southern California and gives the genre a matriarchal twist that keeps it from feeling familiar. Tulsa King is lighter than the others, more of a character comedy built around a fish-out-of-water premise, but it shares the same interest in aging criminals trying to hold onto relevance and rebuild from scratch.
Taken together, these shows represent different angles on the same fundamental question Breaking Bad asks: what does it cost a person to choose crime, and what does it do to everyone around them? Some answer it with tragedy, some with dark humor, some with historical sweep. None of them are the same show, which is exactly the point.
More shows like Breaking Bad
Frequently asked
- What is the most popular show like Breaking Bad?
- Better Call Saul is the most popular show similar to Breaking Bad in the IsItRenewed catalogue.
- Are shows like Breaking Bad still on the air?
- Of the 10 shows similar to Breaking Bad listed here, 0 currently carry a renewed verdict — the rest are cancelled, ended, or awaiting a decision.
- How does IsItRenewed pick shows like Breaking Bad?
- The recommendations come from TMDB's similar-titles data, and each is shown with its current AI renewal verdict so you know which are still going.