Your next box set: Breaking Bad

Walter White is a boring, middle-aged chemistry teacher in Albuquerque, New Mexico, who finds out he's dying of lung cancer. So what does he do? He hooks up with a former pupil turned drug dealer and sets up an illegal lab producing crystal meth, the horribly addictive drug that's caused huge ­social problems in the US. Inevitably, the police (led by his brother-in-law – the show's only contrived touch) take an interest in this mysterious new criminal mastermind. And that's about it, plotwise. Yet Breaking Bad, which aired on the US cable channel AMC, is just about the darkest, most disturbing thing ever shown on TV. What sets it apart is the fact that there's absolutely no attempt to ­explain why a pillar of the community suddenly lurches into a life of moral bankruptcy. White is deeply repressed, very angry, and totally unable to deal with his own emotions. There's no plot device (such as Tony Soprano's heart-to-hearts with Dr Melfi) to give us any clue as to his state of mind. Is he, as he claims, just trying to make his family financially secure? Has he simply stopped caring? Or is this some desperate, incoherent scream of rage in the face of the ­approaching blackness? We follow his Jekyll-and-Hyde ­existence, playing cat and mouse with the police, caring for his family, going to family barbecues and attending ­parents' evenings. But outside that life, he increasingly finds himself ­capable of extraordinary acts of ­aggression and then violence. The first series box set reminds you how quick White's descent is: in an early ­episode, this dull, middle-class teacher has a nice chat with a teenager about a family connection, then strangles him with a bike lock. There are tantalising clues along the way, including a brief flashback to a glittering career where fame and ­fortune beckoned. But in the end, you're left constantly wondering what shocking crime White will commit next. And why.