In the US: Sundays, AMC, 10pm/9c
In the UK: Not yet acquired
Brace yourself. In just five paragraphs’ time, I’m going to be using the word Chekovian.
Okay, science geeks. Who here among us has never considered using their terrible knowledge for evil instead of good? Come on, fess up. You know you want to.
Only me, hey? Oh well… Woo ha ha.
Nevertheless, as you can probably tell from films like Revenge of the Nerds and Falling Down, there’s a whole lot of rage pent up in the nerdlier parts of the US population. And here’s comes a TV show from Vince Gilligan, former producer of The X-Files, about a high school chemistry teacher who decides to get rich by making crystal meth.
At this point, you might be tempted to switch off the show or not even tune in. But I think that would be a mistake.
For one thing, while it’s by no means an easy show – in many ways it could be described as Chekovian – it is darkly comic in multiple joyous ways.
But secondly, it’s from AMC. This is the channel’s second scripted drama series, the first being Mad Men and you know how good that is.*