Breaking Bad is still a top rated series because it accomplished something almost no other television show has managed: it ended perfectly. More than twelve years after its final episode aired in September 2013, the show sits at number one on IMDb’s Top 250 TV Shows list with a 9.5 out of 10 rating, holds a Guinness World Record as the most critically acclaimed TV show of all time, and was ranked the number one best TV series of the last 25 years in a 2023 Rotten Tomatoes critics’ poll. Those are not legacy accolades handed out of nostalgia. They are active, maintained rankings that the show continues to defend against every prestige drama that has come after it. What makes this staying power remarkable is that Breaking Bad did not have the massive built-in audience that many of today’s top shows enjoy at launch.
Its finale drew 10.3 million viewers, a 300 percent increase over the previous season’s finale, largely because Netflix allowed new audiences to binge earlier seasons between broadcast runs. Creator Vince Gilligan publicly credited Netflix with saving the show. That late-arriving audience did not just watch and move on. They became permanent advocates, and the show’s reputation has only grown since. This article examines what specifically keeps Breaking Bad at the top of every major ranking, from its narrative structure and character work to its awards record and cultural footprint. It also looks at how the show’s legacy compares to other all-time greats and why new dramas in 2025 are still being measured against it.
Table of Contents
- What Makes Breaking Bad Still the Highest Rated Series on IMDb?
- The Awards Record That No Drama Has Matched
- How Netflix Changed Breaking Bad’s Legacy Forever
- Breaking Bad Versus the New Golden Age of Television
- The Risks of Nostalgia and Whether the Show Actually Holds Up
- The Expanded Universe That Kept the Conversation Going
- Will Any Show Ever Dethrone Breaking Bad?
- Conclusion
- Frequently Asked Questions
What Makes Breaking Bad Still the Highest Rated Series on IMDb?
The simplest answer is narrative completeness. Breaking Bad ran for five seasons and told one continuous story with a beginning, middle, and end that virtually everyone agreed stuck the landing. Compare that to other shows frequently cited among the greatest of all time. The Sopranos divided its audience with a famously ambiguous cut-to-black finale. game of Thrones collapsed so thoroughly in its final season that it went from cultural dominance to near-irrelevance in public conversation within months. Lost still inspires arguments about whether its ending made sense. Breaking Bad has none of that baggage. Its finale, “Felina,” resolved every major storyline and character arc with a precision that felt both surprising and inevitable. This matters for long-term rankings because audience scores on platforms like IMDb are cumulative.
A weak final season drags down the overall rating. A controversial ending generates one-star protest reviews. Breaking Bad avoided all of that. It remains one of very few shows where critical and audience scores align nearly perfectly across all five seasons. Season 5 holds a 96 percent Tomatometer score on Rotten Tomatoes, meaning the show was actually getting better as it ended, not coasting on goodwill. The other factor is accessibility. Breaking Bad’s premise, a high school chemistry teacher turns to manufacturing methamphetamine after a cancer diagnosis, is immediately graspable. You do not need to understand fantasy lore, political systems, or comic book continuity to follow the story. That low barrier to entry means new viewers continue to discover it, and when they do, they rate it highly because the show delivers on its premise without filler episodes or wasted seasons.
The Awards Record That No Drama Has Matched
Breaking Bad accumulated 58 Primetime Emmy nominations and won 16 Emmy Awards during its run, including Outstanding Drama series in both 2013 and 2014. Bryan Cranston won four Primetime Emmy Awards for Best Lead Actor in a Drama Series, a record for that category at the time. Across all industry ceremonies, the show earned 248 nominations and 92 wins, picking up two Golden Globe Awards, eight Satellite Awards, two Peabody Awards, two Critics’ Choice Awards, and four Television Critics Association Awards along the way. However, awards alone do not explain lasting reputation. Plenty of heavily awarded shows fade from public memory. What distinguishes Breaking Bad’s awards haul is that it came during what many critics consider the most competitive era in television history.
The show was winning Emmys while competing against Mad Men, Homeland, Downton Abbey, and House of Cards. It was not collecting trophies in a weak field. It was beating the best work the medium had ever produced, and critics and industry voters kept choosing it anyway. The Guinness World Record certification in 2014 as the most critically acclaimed TV show of all time put a formal stamp on what the awards already suggested. That record has not been broken. Shows like Succession and The Bear have earned enormous critical praise, but neither has matched the combined weight of Breaking Bad’s critical consensus across every major reviewing body and awards organization simultaneously.
How Netflix Changed Breaking Bad’s Legacy Forever
Breaking Bad’s relationship with Netflix is one of the most important case studies in how streaming reshaped television. When the show premiered on AMC in 2008, it attracted modest ratings. Critical praise was strong from the start, but viewership was not. AMC kept renewing it partly on the strength of its reputation and awards potential, but the audience remained small by broadcast standards through the first few seasons. Netflix changed everything. As earlier seasons became available for streaming, new viewers could catch up at their own pace between broadcast runs. By the time the final eight episodes aired in 2013, the audience had exploded.
The series finale on September 29, 2013 drew 10.3 million viewers, including 6.7 million adults in the 18 to 49 demographic. That made it the highest-rated basic cable series finale at the time and the third highest among all cable finales, behind only The Sopranos at 11.9 million and Sex and the City at 10.6 million. Vince Gilligan did not hedge about Netflix’s role. He publicly credited the platform with saving the show, acknowledging that without streaming catch-up viewing, Breaking Bad likely would have been canceled before reaching its planned ending. This is a critical detail for understanding the show’s legacy. Breaking Bad was not a ratings juggernaut that earned its reputation through mass viewership from day one. It was a slow-build phenomenon that proved quality television could find its audience given enough time and the right distribution model. That story, the show that streaming saved, became part of its mythology.
Breaking Bad Versus the New Golden Age of Television
Every few years, a new drama arrives with breathless comparisons to Breaking Bad. In 2025, new crime dramas are still being measured against it as the benchmark of quality television storytelling. That comparison has become both a compliment and a burden for newer shows. Being called “the next Breaking Bad” sets expectations that almost no series can meet. The comparison is instructive because it reveals what most shows lack. Breaking Bad had a single protagonist with a clearly defined transformation arc. Walter White’s journey from sympathetic teacher to ruthless drug lord was mapped out before the first episode aired.
Many modern prestige dramas try to replicate that formula but stumble because they either stretch the transformation across too many seasons, introduce too many competing storylines, or lose confidence in making their protagonist truly irredeemable. Breaking Bad committed fully. By the final season, Walter White was a villain, and the show did not flinch from that. The tradeoff is that Breaking Bad’s model is almost impossible to replicate at scale. It works because of a specific set of conditions: a contained story with a predetermined endpoint, a network willing to let the creative team execute their vision without interference, and a lead actor capable of carrying the show through radical character shifts. Most shows do not have all three. Better Call Saul, the prequel series that ran from 2015 to 2022, came closest, largely because it had the same creative team and a similarly patient network. It earned its own critical acclaim, but even it exists in Breaking Bad’s shadow.
The Risks of Nostalgia and Whether the Show Actually Holds Up
There is a legitimate question about whether any show’s reputation can survive rewatching with fresh eyes a decade later. Television ages differently than film. Pacing expectations have shifted. Audiences raised on streaming-era editing may find Breaking Bad’s slower early episodes, particularly in the first two seasons, more deliberate than they remember. The show takes its time establishing Walter White’s ordinary life before the transformation begins, and that patience can feel like a different era of storytelling to viewers accustomed to shows that start at full speed. That said, Breaking Bad’s rewatch numbers suggest this is a minority concern.
The show continues to appear in Netflix’s most-watched lists in markets where it remains available, and new viewers regularly post about discovering it for the first time. The writing holds up because the character motivations are rooted in recognizable human impulses, pride, fear, resentment, the desire to be seen as exceptional, rather than in topical issues that date quickly. The one area where the show’s age shows is in its representation. Breaking Bad’s main cast is almost entirely white and male, and its portrayal of the Mexican drug trade has drawn criticism for leaning on stereotypes that the show never fully interrogates. These are valid criticisms that did not receive as much attention during the original run but are worth acknowledging now. A show does not need to be perfect to be great, and its storytelling achievements remain extraordinary, but pretending it has no blind spots does a disservice to honest assessment.
The Expanded Universe That Kept the Conversation Going
Breaking Bad’s cultural footprint extends well beyond its original five seasons. The prequel series Better Call Saul ran for six seasons from 2015 to 2022 and earned its own wave of critical acclaim, with many arguing it rivaled or even surpassed the original in certain aspects of craft. The sequel film El Camino: A Breaking Bad Movie arrived on Netflix in 2019, following Jesse Pinkman’s story after the series finale. This expanded universe kept Breaking Bad in active cultural conversation for nearly a decade after the original show ended.
Most series finales mark the end of public engagement with a show’s world. Breaking Bad’s finale was closer to a midpoint. New viewers who discovered Better Call Saul went back to watch Breaking Bad. Fans who rewatched Breaking Bad ahead of El Camino brought renewed attention to the original series. The franchise sustained itself through quality rather than quantity, releasing projects only when the creative team had stories worth telling rather than churning out content on a corporate schedule.
Will Any Show Ever Dethrone Breaking Bad?
The honest answer is that it is unlikely in the near term, and the reason has less to do with Breaking Bad’s quality than with the state of television itself. The streaming era has fragmented audiences so thoroughly that achieving the kind of universal consensus Breaking Bad enjoys may no longer be possible. A show can be brilliant and still only reach a fraction of the potential audience because it is locked behind one of dozens of competing platforms.
Breaking Bad benefited from arriving at the exact right moment: late enough to benefit from streaming distribution through Netflix, but early enough that the cultural conversation around prestige television was still relatively unified. That window has closed. Future contenders for the title of greatest drama ever made will have to fight through a level of content saturation that Breaking Bad never faced. Until one does, it will remain parked at number one on IMDb, daring anything else to take its spot.
Conclusion
Breaking Bad endures at the top of every major television ranking because it combined exceptional craft with a complete, satisfying story told across exactly as many episodes as it needed. Its 9.5 IMDb rating, Guinness World Record, 16 Emmy wins, and number one placement in Rotten Tomatoes’ best series of 25 years poll are not artifacts of a moment. They are the result of a show that made no major missteps across five seasons and ended on its strongest note. That consistency is what separates it from other contenders that peaked early or stumbled at the finish.
For anyone who has not watched Breaking Bad, the show remains as effective now as it was in 2013. For those debating whether it deserves its reputation or whether newer shows have surpassed it, the rankings speak clearly. Other dramas have come close, Better Call Saul and a handful of others chief among them, but none has assembled the same combination of critical consensus, audience devotion, and narrative precision. Until one does, Breaking Bad holds the crown.
Frequently Asked Questions
Is Breaking Bad really the number one rated TV show of all time?
On IMDb, yes. Breaking Bad holds a 9.5 out of 10 rating and is ranked number one on the platform’s Top 250 TV Shows list. It also holds a Guinness World Record as the most critically acclaimed TV show of all time, certified in 2014.
How many Emmy Awards did Breaking Bad win?
Breaking Bad won 16 Primetime Emmy Awards from 58 nominations. Across all industry award ceremonies, the show accumulated 92 wins from 248 nominations, including two Golden Globes, eight Satellite Awards, and two Peabody Awards.
Did Netflix really save Breaking Bad from cancellation?
Creator Vince Gilligan publicly credited Netflix with saving the show. By making earlier seasons available for streaming, Netflix allowed audiences to catch up between broadcast runs, which drove the massive viewership increase that saw the finale draw 10.3 million viewers, a 300 percent jump from the previous season’s finale.
How did the Breaking Bad finale compare to other cable show finales in viewership?
The Breaking Bad finale drew 10.3 million viewers, making it the highest-rated basic cable series finale at the time. Among all cable finales, it ranked third behind The Sopranos at 11.9 million and Sex and the City at 10.6 million.
Is Better Call Saul as good as Breaking Bad?
Better Call Saul earned substantial critical acclaim during its six-season run from 2015 to 2022, with many critics arguing it matched or exceeded Breaking Bad in specific areas like character development and cinematography. However, it has not surpassed Breaking Bad in overall rankings or cultural impact.
Should I watch Breaking Bad for the first time in 2025 or 2026?
The show holds up well for new viewers. Its character-driven storytelling and visual filmmaking remain compelling, though the pacing of early episodes may feel slower compared to modern streaming-era dramas. The complete five-season arc means you are watching a finished story with a widely praised ending.
