20 Great Shows Like Breaking Bad, Ranked

A core appeal of "Breaking Bad" was the deconstruction of the nuclear family filtered through a thrilling drug story. As Walter gets deeper into the meth business, his family relationships strain — but, ultimately, he drags them into it with him. This brings us to the premise of "Ozark," a Netflix show that has a lot in common with AMC's modern classic.

"Ozark" follows Martin "Marty" Byrde (Jason Bateman) and his wife (Laura Linney), two seemingly normal parents involved in money laundering. After a scheme goes wrong with the Mexican Cartel, Marty is forced to relocate his family to the Ozarks region in Missouri. His criminal activity does not stop in the Ozarks, and — as you might have guessed — things get even worse for the Byrde family and their two children.

"Yellowjackets" is a Showtime exclusive that premiered in November of 2021, and it promptly set the world on fire. The drama follows a group of high school soccer players whose plane crashes in the Canadian wilderness. The show blends horror, mystery, and drama in a debut season that takes place during two separate timelines. If you want a nail-biting drama like "Breaking Bad," this could fill the void. Pitting desperate people willing to do anything to survive against each other is a forte of both shows. 

Much of "Yellowjackets" takes place during the "Lord of the Flies"-style trauma the characters are forced to survive. But in an interesting additional layer, we get to see the characters that survive as adults, 25 years later. This interplay has made for a compelling, critically acclaimed show boasting 100% critics score on Rotten Tomatoes.

While a second season is not yet confirmed, the writers are coming together in 2022 to pitch a continuation of the story. We might not see it until 2023, which gives you plenty of time to catch up.

It may not seem that way at first, but "Search Party" is an absolute trip for anyone who loves nail-biting thrillers about terrible people making terrible choices. But isn't "Search Party" a comedy? It's a fair question, and "yes" isn't an incorrect answer. It begins as a mystery comedy hybrid, and while it takes a while to get there, "Search Party" becomes one of the darkest in the genre to ever see the light of day. For comparison, it is easy to forget just how funny the early seasons of "Breaking Bad" were. Also, before Walter White, Bryan Cranston was still best known for his time on sitcom "Malcolm in the Middle." 

At the beginning, Dory Sief (Alia Shawkat) convinces her conceited group of Brooklyn hipster friends to help her look for a missing girl they went to college with — albeit one they mostly don't remember. It is a commentary on millennials, but the Season 1 finale brings a shocking twist, and "Search Party" turns suddenly into a crime thriller in Season 2. The best thing about the show — which started on TBS, got cancelled, and was eventually picked up by HBO — is that it pulls this trick every season, to greater and greater success. Each one is a different, darker genre. By the final two seasons, we are very nearly in horror territory before the penultimate episodes become something entirely unexpected.

Even a few short years after its finale, "Mr. Robot" feels like a relic of an era where making a cable show look like an HBO show was all that mattered. That, and getting a big Hollywood actor attached to the project. Thankfully, USA's hacker drama starring Rami Malek and Christian Slater was much deeper than that makes it sound. Sam Esmail brought a slick style that remained a prominent part of the show's identity throughout its four-season run. What started as "Fight Club" for the high speed internet era slowly became a cerebral drama about identity and trauma. The twists and turns of the first season will remind "Breaking Bad" fans a lot of that show at its best. "Mr. Robot" definitely goes some weird places Vince Gilligan's shows don't, though. 

The flashy first season of "Mr. Robot" was a huge conversation starter when it came out, but the show didn't manage to grab the culture by the throat. That's a shame. While its viewership began to wane during the bumpy second season, the show found its footing again in its third season (per Vox). The ending of the fourth and final season is surprisingly intimate and well worth sticking around for.

Before "Justified" and "The Americans" helped define the prestige TV era, FX was already going toe to toe with HBO. Beginning the same year as "The Wire," FX's "The Shield" was another critically acclaimed crime show about morally ambiguous cop. These shows disregarded the usual copoganda route popular contemporaries like "Law & Order" and "CSI" took (and, to an extent, are still taking), and instead turned a critical eye towards the police. "Breaking Bad" would not exist without "The Shield." It was a show that helped usher in the anti-hero era from HBO to cable, paving the way for AMC's success. 

Starring Michael Chiklis as Vic Mackey, an LAPD cop leading a new division, "The Shield ” focuses on corrupt policing tactics and racial tensions that permeate the system. It is a brutally honest show, predating the anti-hero trend by a few years and starring a group of straight-up evil cops who torture, plant evidence, and kill when they have to.

With Bill Hader as the star, you might have looked at "Barry" and dismissed it as too much of a comedy to satisfy your needs for blood, violence, and twists. But hear us out, "Barry" doesn't take long before it gets seriously dark. Plus, aren't legendary dramatic shows like "Breaking Bad" and "The Sopranos" full of dark humor, anyway? The answer is an unequivocal yes. If you miss the tension of the "Breaking Bad" season finales, "Barry" is one of the best HBO shows you might be missing.

The elevator pitch for this one is killer, pun intended. Barry (Hader) is a hitman who is ready to give it up for a career as a thespian. Hollywood doesn't bring Barry the peace he is seeking, and his profession ends up catching up with him. "Barry" has a compelling, dark storyline, but it is backed up by some of the funniest performances on TV. Hader is great, but Henry Winkler as his hapless acting coach shows that a veteran actor like him can still put out his best work. Anthony Carrigan as NoHo Hank also gets an honorable mention in the "most hilarious character on TV" category.

"Breaking Bad" and "Mad Men" put AMC on the map as a destination for the best dramas on TV. In the following years, we would see other cable networks do the same. FX is another such success story, and the TV Western "Justified" was one of the network's earliest breakout hits, beginning in 2010. If you liked the tense character dynamics of "Breaking Bad," specifically the relationship between Walt and his DEA agent brother-in-law Hank, the two leads of "Justified" might fill that void. 

Set in contemporary times, "Justified" often feels like it is taking 19th Century Western characters and plopping them into the modern era. It works too, considering how much the lead Timothy Olyphant channels classic American cowboys in his role as U.S. Marshal Raylan Givens. He returns to his hometown in Tennessee to investigate a series of crimes perpetrated by the Crowder family. While each season focuses on a different investigation, Boyd Crowder (Walter Goggins) is a constant. The old acquaintance of Raylan is an uneasy ally, and the relationship between the two men, and the actors who play them, will keep you watching until the sixth and final season.

"The Americans" is peak TV critics loved, but you probably didn't watch. Seriously, the show boasts some of the highest critics ratings of its era, and in 2015 Salon called it "the best TV show you're not watching." This FX drama starred Matthew Rhys and Keri Russell as two undercover KGB agents posing as a suburban married couple in the United States. While it's dark and full of anti-heroes, the spy drama is unique among 2010 prestige dramas. But if you are aching for season after season of suspense and betrayal that shows like "Breaking Bad" deliver so consistently, "The Americans" should go straight to the top of your list.

Set during the '80s, Elizabeth (Russell) and Phillip (Rhys) Jennings have been living in deep cover for over a decade and have begun to raise a family. As the Cold War drags on, the characters grow increasingly hostile and paranoid. If you're worried that "The Americans" might be too political for you, don't. There is plenty of talk of communism and capitalism, but the show is about the twists, dark reveals, and the cast of completely untrustworthy characters.

It should come as no surprise that "Breaking Bad" fans would be into a spin-off series focusing on one of the show's most entertaining characters. What is surprising is that "Better Call Saul" is almost as critically acclaimed as the show that spawned it. The critical consensus doesn't lie. It may not have as much of a slice of the cultural conversation as "Breaking Bad" did, but the latest series proves that creator Vince Gilligan hasn't gotten any less sharp.

The series follows the soon to be crooked lawyer Saul Goodman (Bob Odenkirk) and how he fell from grace. Over the course of the show, we've watched him change from the well intentioned lawyer Jimmy McGill to the sleazy Saul that "Breaking Bad" fans love. "Better Call Saul" develops a whole new cast of nuanced characters, including a focus on Saul's love interest Kim Wexler (Rhea Seehorn) and his strained relationship with his brother Chuck (Michael McKean). "Better Call Saul" also brings back beloved "Breaking Bad" villains Mike (Jonathan Banks) and Gus (Giancarlo Esposito), giving those actors another chance to shine in these incredible roles.

HBO diehards might guffaw at "The Wire" being mentioned in the same sentence as "Breaking Bad," but let's all calm down and just admit both are in the TV hall of fame. While HBO's groundbreaking drama is a much more down-to-earth realistic take on drug crime, both are top of the class in the stories they are trying to tell.

Throughout its five season run, "The Wire" follows groups of cops, drug dealers, and other criminals and politicians in Baltimore. A group of police forms the narrative core of the show, a thread tying disparate characters and tragedies up like a classic Russian novel. Each season of "The Wire" follows the Baltimore PD on a different beat, focusing on a different part of the city.

Characters like the Baltimore PD's Jimmy McNulty (Dominic West), drug kingpin Stringer Bell (Idris Elba), and stick-up man Omar Little (Michael K. Williams) are some of the most complex in TV history. And a very young Michael B. Jordan even had his first big performance during the first season.