Part intricately plotted gangster epic, part satire of American materialism, Breaking Bad is an Albuquerque tall tale about a cancer-stricken chemistry teacher named Walter White (Bryan Cranston) who begins manufacturing a superpotent form of crystal meth to create a nest egg for his family and gradually transforms into a criminal monster as terrifying and remorseless as the beasts unleashed by desert bomb blasts in 1950s creature features. Series creator Vince Gilligan jauntily summed up Walter’s arc as “Mr. Chips becomes Scarface,” but there’s a lot more to it than that, starting with the implication, seeded very early in season one, that Walter feels burdened by the domestic responsibilities that he claims to hold sacred, and cheated of the fame and wealth that he believes is owed to him.

Walter White is one of TV’s greatest anti-heroes, but that might not be the case if Gilligan and his writers hadn’t devised a constellation of supporting characters as compelling as the show’s protagonist. Walt’s former student turned tragic ally Jesse Pinkman (Aaron Paul), his suffering wife Skyler (Anna Gunn), and his macho, bullet-headed brother-in-law, DEA agent Hank Schrader (Dean Norris) each bring their own flaws and blind spots to complicate the show’s morality. And the show’s Dick Tracy–worthy gallery of drug-world schemers, including hilariously amoral criminal-emphasis-on-the-criminal lawyer Saul Goodman (Bob Odenkirk) and cool-as-ice drug lord/chicken magnate Gus Fring (Giancarlo Esposito), add nuance and shading to Walter’s gradual transformation into a criminal mastermind.

Airing for five seasons on AMC between 2008 and 2013, Breaking Bad is imbued with touches of 1940s film noir, spaghetti westerns, cat-and-mouse crime thrillers, and science fiction. The filmmaking is exuberantly showy, each episode containing a shot from a point of view you’ve never seen before: a whiteboard full of equations, the blade of a shovel about to dig, a Roomba prowling a floor full of zonked-out party guests. But while Breaking Bad is a consummate early-21st-century, anti-hero-driven cable drama that prizes showmanship above all else, it never assumes we’re here to uncritically root for Walter. Like The Sopranos, it keeps escalating Walter’s awfulness season by season, as if trying to see what it will take to finally alienate a fan base that might look to him as an aspirational figure. —Matt Zoller Seitz