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Comment by edgyquant | Hacker News Reader

I think Breaking Bad really set the stage for TV shows being good film. Whether you like the show or not it had a clear and defined story and ended after 5 seasons where most shows before would just run until their ratings dropped.

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HBO had been doing it for a few years, with shows like The Wire and Deadwood. But Breaking Bad helped bring it to a wider audience, since AMC is basic cable rather than premium. (AMC had launched into that a year before with Mad Men, which was similarly TV as good film.)

I think the turn of the century start of the prestige drama cable age was The Sopranos, with The West Wing doing something similar on network TV.

That seems a really good starting point. Oz preceded it, but was never the breakout hit that The Sopranos became.

WW was still quite formulaic. ER, NYPD Blue, etc were all shows that maybe pushed for more consistent storylines but they were still boxed in by old school network expectations, and they got their starts in the mid-90s.

Sopranos was a very clear break in writing style. People like to slot in The Wire next to it, but The Wire was more episodic/restricted and honestly felt like an R-rated network tv show to me.

I'd add Rome as perhaps a closer model to the sort of high budget, prestige television we're afforded now. First season had a budget in excess of $100 million dollars, a major increase over anything comparable (compare this to The Wire that was filming contemporaneously).

I do think Sopranos was one of the first but specifically left it off due to it having lots of filler compared to breaking bad. It's a weird middle point where it did tell a movie like story but still lots of the unneeded drama of syndicated shows that came before it.

Better Call Saul at its best is as good, if not better, than 99% of Breaking Bad. Of course, the best episodes of BB are among the best in TV history.

I agree I think it's actually a much better show. It does take a couple seasons to really kick into high gear so I've had trouble turning other people onto it who were BB fans.

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