"You cannot replace Breaking Bad."
It's common sentiment around the TV community. AMC's hit show is ending and being replaced with Low Winter Sun. A remake of a very dark UK noir 2-parter miniseries. I'm eager going into this show but also very very nervous. My expectations are astronomically high especially since AMC has marketed this show as "the next epic series after Breaking Bad." It seems AMC has confidence in it's remake.
For those who don't know, Low Winter Sun is a gritty crime drama about a couple of police officers who decided to enact a "righteous killing" of a dirty cop. The show is centered around the two trying to cover up their crime while slowly finding out things about their victim that drags them into further corruption. The original British miniseries was a self contained story. One can't help but imagine that AMC will branch away from the British show. I mean the ending (without spoiling it) resolves everything quite clearly. And both the principle characters are drowned in their own corruption to the point of no return. I have literally no idea how AMC intends on making that story a full length series. Let alone a series that'll last for more than one season.
Then again, Breaking Bad is a bit of a similar type of story where the two principle characters are destroyed by their own flaws. But there are times where I felt Breaking Bad was a little too drawn out. Don't get me wrong, I really like the show. But Breaking Bad has a tendency to navel gaze with it's side characters. Especially with Hank's wife. Despite that, it never reached a point (got bad) where it would completely stop because there were always a few loose ends that the writers could exploit and the side plot lines were always well woven into the main storyline. Just sometimes when the A storyline takes a backseat to the B storyline the writing loses a little bit of direction.
The story of the UK Low Winter Sun is actually a dead end before it even started. It's a perfect tragedy where the characters had literally no where else to go but down. At first I thought AMC was going to take this in a different direction but the opening sneak preview is extremely close to the opening of the UK show. In fact Mark Strong even utters similar lines like "I'm not drunk enough." So... yeah... AMC has a few challenges to overcome to make a 2-parter UK miniseries into a full fledged TV show if it wants to stay faithful. I guess it's possible because AMC has worked magic before like in Hell on Wheels and Breaking Bad. But the writers better be careful. The plot diversions have to come naturally or else it'll just be another The Killing... or it can go in the extreme opposite direction and be so obtuse and undercooked that it'll be like Rubicon... another weak AMC show.
Either way... it looks promising and Mark Strong is a great actor. For those who want to see the sneak preview:
