Your mileage on the best era of basic cable television likely revolves around your age. For example, some Gen-Xers might point to the late ‘90s MTV era that gave us cartoons like Beavis and Butt-Head as the best era of basic cable. Others might point to the early 2000s, where we got shows like The Shield, Monk, and Psych.
And, while I think there’s definitely something to be said about both eras, I think there’s a very strong case for the Breaking Bad-era of AMC as being the best time in basic cable history, and I have a few reasons why everyone should say its name.
You Have Two Of Arguably The Greatest Shows In TV History Airing On The Same Network At The Same Time
Now, let me just set some parameters on what is actually considered “basic cable.” It may seem obvious, but networks like HBO, Showtime, Starz, and Cinemax wouldn’t be categorized as “basic,” as they were premium networks that you had to pay extra for. In that way, even though shows like The Sopranos, The Wire, Spartacus, Outlander, Dexter, and Shameless are often considered excellent programming for their era, they were not basic cable shows.
Again, it might seem obvious, but now that pretty much everybody has migrated from cable to streaming services, there might be a segment of people who don’t remember the basic cable days. When I talk about basic, I mostly mean the channels that we got with packages, such as TNT, TBS, FX, USA, SyFy, just to name a few.
Well, out of the select channels we received, one of them was AMC, which is short for American Movie Classics. American classics were what the channel had to offer early on, but with the advent of cable networks creating television series, we got the miniseries Broken Trail in 2006. And, it was good! But, it wasn’t until the next year, when we got Mad Men, and then the year after that, when we got Breaking Bad, that AMC truly hit its stride.
Because, and I’m sure you already know this, Mad Men and Breaking Bad are often considered two of the greatest TV shows that have ever existed, and not just on basic cable. I mean period.
Often referred to as “The Golden Age” of TV (which included both Breaking Bad and The Wire), the time period from the early 2000s to the mid-2010s is usually looked back upon as the halcyon days of modern TV. That said, Breaking Bad and Mad Men weren’t on the premium networks. They were available to everybody with a basic cable subscription. Honestly, you really couldn’t get any better than those two shows. However…
We Also Got A Cultural Phenomenon In The Walking Dead, Which Was TV's Biggest Scripted Show For Several Years
I stopped watching The Walking Dead long before it ended (and I wasn’t alone), but I don’t think anybody could have predicted how big the show would be when it debuted back in 2010. Here you had this zombie show that was based on a comic book, and it just seemed to conflict with the seriousness of shows like Breaking Bad, Mad Men, and Rubicon. (My beloved, one season Rubicon).
However, The Walking Dead EXPLODED! Those first few seasons, all the way up to Glenn’s death (though, some may argue that the show fell off a cliff before that), amounted to a cultural milestone, and it was mind-blowing that AMC could juggle both its prestige shows AS WELL AS a super popular genre show.
And, to be quite honest, The Walking Dead was really good at times. Looking back, the show followed the comics as much as the creative teams could, keeping close to story arcs that were super impactful. It was honestly when the show deviated from those story beats that I felt as if it was going astray, but I digress.
What’s important to keep in mind is that The Walking Dead was, in a lot of ways, the show that people actually tuned in to AMC for. Yes, Mad Men and Breaking Bad were seen as highly lauded, respectable shows, but it wasn’t until Breaking Bad made its way to Netflix that it finally found its audience.
No, it was The Walking Dead that truly made AMC the destination for basic cable, which in turn made much lesser shows on the network seem like required viewing, which brings me to my next point.
Even AMC’s Lesser Shows Felt Like Important Television
For this one, you really had to be there, but AMC was on such a roll back in the Breaking Bad/Mad Men/The Walking Dead days that even far lesser shows seemed like important television back then.
The one that instantly comes to mind is The Killing. Based on the Danish series, Forbrydelsen, The Killing ran for 3 seasons (well, 4 if you count when it went to Netflix), and was popular…for at least the first season (Some people didn’t like how the first season ended).
Hell on Wheels, which was a western, was also well-watched. This is kind of strange when you come to think of it. Unlike neo-Western shows like Yellowstone and Justified, Hell on Wheels was an actual western-western, taking place in the 1860s (It was about the construction of the railroads).
I bring these two shows up because even though a lot of people might not talk about either of them today, back when they were both running concurrently with the big three (BB/MM/TWD), they were also seen as interesting (if not as important) television shows that people watched just because they were on AMC.
Sure, by the time we got to shows like Into the Badlands, Preacher, and Fear the Walking Dead, the channel had lost a bit of its allure, but, with Better Call Saul debuting in 2015, the network still had a reason to tune in.
This Was The Last Real TV-Specific Era Before Streaming Services Changed The Game
Lastly, the Breaking Bad-period was arguably the last true era before most people migrated to streaming services.
By the time Breaking Bad ended in 2013, you had people interested in the cast of Orange is the New Black, or engaged with shows like House of Cards on Netflix. Hell, as I mentioned earlier, Breaking Bad truly found its audience because of the streaming platform (I’ll never get over all the people who I tried to get into Breaking Bad who declined, only for them to tell ME about the show once they discovered it on Netflix).
That said, AMC truly represented a time when people actually showed up week after week to watch a program together. There was none of that binge-watching crap (yes, I called it crap) that is absolutely ruining TV. Instead, like the olden days, people had to actually wait each week to find out what happened next, which was excruciating if you really wanted to know the futures of Don Draper, Walter White, and Rick Grimes.
Yes, there were other shows in this period–I know a lot of people loved Sons of Anarchy, and Burn Notice–but no other basic cable network really had a stranglehold on viewers like AMC did back in the Breaking Bad-era.
But, what do you think? Were you there BEFORE Netflix and the rest became the one-stop shops for everybody? I’d love to hear your memories.
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