Series: Get Your Bearings Before Watching
Premise, setting, scale and the people on screen. Nothing here reveals a plot turn; where a note touches later seasons, it is folded and labelled.
How a summary is built
A good summary answers three questions for a viewer who is either starting fresh or returning after a long gap: who is at the centre, what do they want, and what is standing in the way. We describe the situation as the first episode establishes it, then add only the facts you can check: the network, the years it aired, the number of seasons and episodes, and the creator.
We keep interpretation out of these entries. If a show is widely praised for a particular quality, we say that critics and viewers praise it rather than presenting the praise as a fact about the show. Our own views appear in the season reviews, clearly labelled as our read.
Series at a glance
Breaking Bad
Walter White, a high-school chemistry teacher in Albuquerque, receives a cancer diagnosis and decides to secure his family's future by entering the drug trade with a former student, Jesse Pinkman. The series is built around one long question: how far does a person's self-image bend before it breaks?
The Sopranos
Tony Soprano runs a North Jersey crime family and a suburban household, and after a series of panic attacks he begins seeing a psychiatrist, Dr. Jennifer Melfi. Sessions in her office frame much of the drama.
Succession
Logan Roy controls a global media and entertainment conglomerate, and his adult children compete to be named his successor. Dialogue-heavy and darkly comic, it rewards attention to who is in which room.
Mad Men
Don Draper is a creative director at a Madison Avenue advertising agency in the 1960s. The decade's changes play out through the agency's accounts and the private lives of its staff.
The Wire
Each season widens the view of Baltimore, moving from a police wiretap case to the port, city hall, the schools and the newspaper. Patience pays off; early episodes set up threads that run for years.
Severance
Employees at Lumon Industries have undergone a procedure that splits their work memories from their personal ones. Mark Scout leads a small team whose curiosity about their jobs grows.
Dark
A child's disappearance in the German town of Winden exposes connections between four families across several time periods. Keep a family tree handy; the show expects it.
Fleabag
A young woman in London runs a struggling café and speaks directly to the camera, which becomes part of the story itself.
Cast information
Principal performers and the characters they play. Listings name roles only; they do not hint at how any character's story ends.
- Bryan Cranston
- Walter White · Breaking Bad
- Aaron Paul
- Jesse Pinkman · Breaking Bad
- Anna Gunn
- Skyler White · Breaking Bad
- James Gandolfini
- Tony Soprano · The Sopranos
- Edie Falco
- Carmela Soprano · The Sopranos
- Lorraine Bracco
- Dr. Jennifer Melfi · The Sopranos
- Brian Cox
- Logan Roy · Succession
- Jeremy Strong
- Kendall Roy · Succession
- Sarah Snook
- Shiv Roy · Succession
- Kieran Culkin
- Roman Roy · Succession
- Jon Hamm
- Don Draper · Mad Men
- Elisabeth Moss
- Peggy Olson · Mad Men
- Bob Odenkirk
- Jimmy McGill / Saul Goodman · Better Call Saul and Breaking Bad
- Rhea Seehorn
- Kim Wexler · Better Call Saul
- Adam Scott
- Mark Scout · Severance
- Britt Lower
- Helly R. · Severance
Viewing order notes
Some shows sit inside a wider set of stories. Better Call Saul (AMC, 2015–2022, 6 seasons) is a prequel to Breaking Bad but also extends beyond it. Release order is the most common recommendation, since its later seasons assume you know Breaking Bad.
Twin Peaks originally aired on ABC in 1990 and 1991. The 1992 film Fire Walk with Me and the 2017 Showtime revival, Twin Peaks: The Return, build on both seasons; watching the film before the revival is the usual advice.
Spoiler · Breaking Bad finale Why release order matters for Better Call Saul
Black-and-white sequences in Better Call Saul take place after the events of Breaking Bad's final season. They make most sense once you know how Breaking Bad ends.