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 takes a mundane, sympathetic starting point, a mild-mannered teacher with a terminal diagnosis, and watches him dismantle every moral guardrail he ever had. The pleasure of the show is not really the drugs or the crime. It is watching a man rationalize his way into becoming someone he would have despised, step by step, with complete internal logic. The writing trusts the audience to keep up, and the slow burn of each season rewards patience in a way that most TV dramas do not.
The best shows like Breaking Bad
1. Better Call Saul
This is the most direct extension of the Breaking Bad world, and it earns every comparison. Jimmy McGill's slow corruption into Saul Goodman is told with the same patient, consequence-driven writing as its predecessor, and Mike Ehrmantraut gets a richly detailed backstory that makes him far more than the stoic fixer he appeared to be. If you found yourself most interested in the moral psychology of Walter White's descent, Better Call Saul doubles down on exactly that.
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Ended0%
2. Tulsa King
Tulsa King shares Breaking Bad's interest in a middle-aged man remaking himself outside the rules, though it plays the premise considerably lighter. The fish-out-of-water setup, a New York mob capo dropped into Oklahoma, gives the show a consistent comic friction, but the underpinning themes of loyalty, betrayal, and building something new after a long loss are familiar territory for Breaking Bad fans. It is not as dark, but the central character has enough texture to keep it interesting.
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Likely Renewed95%
3. Animal Kingdom
Where Breaking Bad focuses on one man pulling his family into crime, Animal Kingdom starts with a family already deep inside it and shows what that world does to a teenager absorbed into it. The Cody family has the same mixture of genuine affection and ruthless self-interest that made the White family dynamic so uncomfortable to watch. The show is grittier and less plotted than Breaking Bad, but fans who responded to the family tension will find plenty here.
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Ended0%
4. Snowfall
Snowfall approaches the drug trade from a historical and structural angle, showing how the crack epidemic of the 1980s was not a single story but a collision of many, including dealers, users, and outside forces with their own agendas. It shares Breaking Bad's interest in how ordinary people get drawn into the drug economy and what it costs them. The Los Angeles setting is rendered with real specificity, and the show does not flinch from the scale of the damage it depicts.
Stream on Hulu
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5. Narcos
Narcos is the most expansive entry on this list, telling the story of the Colombian cocaine trade and the law enforcement efforts to dismantle it across multiple perspectives. Like Breaking Bad, it treats the drug business as a world with its own internal logic and hierarchy rather than simple villainy. The documentary-style narration gives it a propulsive quality, and the scale of what it depicts, the actual historical cartels and the chaos around them, gives the crime stakes a different kind of weight.
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Ended0%
More on shows like Breaking Bad
Fans of Breaking Bad tend to want a few specific things when they go looking for the next show. They want a central character whose choices are genuinely bad and genuinely understandable at the same time. They want a world that feels real and lived-in, whether that is the Albuquerque desert or a Colombian jungle or the streets of South Central Los Angeles. They want consequences that actually stick. And they often want a slow escalation, a sense that the world is tightening around the protagonist, rather than a series of disconnected crises.
The shows here cover that ground from different angles. Better Call Saul and Narcos are probably the closest in tone: one is a meticulous character study rooted directly in the Breaking Bad universe, the other is a documentary-style chronicle of the cocaine trade at its peak. Snowfall is the most historically grounded of the group, tracing how crack cocaine reshaped Los Angeles in the 1980s through multiple intersecting stories. Animal Kingdom trades the lone-wolf protagonist for a criminal family dynamic, with a young outsider slowly absorbed into something dangerous. Tulsa King is the lightest entry, a dramedy with a fish-out-of-water hook, but it still has a genuinely watchable central figure navigating loyalty and self-reinvention later in life.
None of these shows are Breaking Bad, and the best of them do not try to be. Better Call Saul arguably surpasses its predecessor in its patience and depth. Narcos and Snowfall bring real history to bear in ways that add weight to the fiction. Animal Kingdom is messier but has a raw, sun-bleached energy that sustains it. Tulsa King is the odd one out tonally, but if you have been watching heavy drama for weeks and want something that goes down easier without abandoning the crime genre entirely, it earns its place on the list.
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, 1 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.