Is there a more fearless actor than Bryan Cranston? We know him best as a comedian, going to extremes to appear ridiculous as Malcolm in the Middle's harried Hal. But that nutty dad had it easy compared to Walt White, the milquetoast-turned-maker of crystal meth played by Cranston in AMC's bold, bizarre Breaking Bad. This show is Weeds with a death wish.

"I am awake," Walt declares, not long after a diagnosis of inoperable lung cancer turns this sad-sack chemistry teacher into a criminal collaborator. He uses his mad lab skills to cook up meth in an RV, the better to provide for his family (including a pregnant wife and a teenaged son with cerebral palsy) when he's gone.

Cranston exposes himself fully, and brilliantly, in this demanding role, and not just because he spends an awful lot of time in his tighty-whities in order to protect his clothes from toxic meth fumes. (Boxers would have been less funny, and also less sad.) He mood-swings from humiliation and despair through fear, self-loathing and ultimately to a newfound assertiveness, always engaging our sympathies with raw authenticity.

Breaking Bad doesn't glamorize his detour into the drug trade or minimize the danger. (His boorish brother-in-law is a DEA agent.) Walt's partner in crime is a lazy, profane dope, a failed former student. Their misadventures lead to deadly complications, and we're never allowed to forget how hard it is to kill, or to dispose of the dead.

Grisly and wacky, suspenseful and sorrowful, this darkly compelling cautionary fable of very abnormal chemistry is infused with a Coen Brothers-like flavor of macabre humor. Following the breakthrough success of Mad Men, AMC is breaking bad itself, angling to be cable's next FX. So far, so startling.

Breaking Bad airs Sundays, 10 pm/ET, on AMC.

Sidebar: Growing Up Online

Put down that mouse. Easier said than done? Then you need to watch Growing Up Online, an unsettling piece of high-tech cultural anthropology, courtesy of PBS' Frontline. It uses a New Jersey community as a microcosm for exploring what is described as "the greatest generation gap since the advent of rock-and-roll." Tech-challenged teachers wonder how to cut through the clutter to get students to focus. Parents feel shut out and are alarmed as their kids engage in virtual relationships and create new identities on social-networking sites. One case of cyberbullying leads to suicide. An anorexic teen finds a site that seems to encourage her disorder. A family is torn apart over issues of privacy vs. safety. One expert calls the digital divide "the new Wild West. Nobody is really in charge." What would June Cleaver do? Probably text Ward for help.

Growing Up Online airs Tuesday, Jan. 22, on PBS. (Check local listings for airtimes.)