In dog days, three series get it right

There are three elements that every television series should strive to have: innate greatness, a willingness to course-correct and a persistence of vision that never gets compromised.

In these desultory days of the television season, made more so by the strike that was and the confusion that is - viewers have no clear idea whether their shows are coming back this season, next season or never - here are three series that get it right:

-- "Breaking Bad" (Sundays, 10 p.m. AMC; repeated throughout the week): There's a fearlessness in this AMC drama about a high school chemistry teacher who finds out he has inoperable lung cancer and starts making meth in the New Mexico desert in an effort to leave his family a nest egg.

Well, that's the glossy happy version.

What's really going on in "Breaking Bad" - created by FX, which then passed on it, allowing AMC to swoop in - is that the main character, Walt White, is having a midlife crises of epic proportions. In his manic zeal to free himself from the bonds of law-abiding boredom while also satisfying the caretaker needs as a father to a teenage son with cerebral palsy and a newborn on the way, Walt has come completely unstuck. He makes bad decisions that are then magnified in their enormity. He is beginning to feel alive just as death is reaching for him, and the heartache and anger apparent in that conundrum is magnificently portrayed by Bryan Cranston.

The innate greatness of "Breaking Bad" is that it's almost as if two artists - and a cable channel - simultaneously decided to achieve something brilliant without worrying about what might happen if they failed. Kind of like jumping the Grand Canyon in a burst of adrenaline without fully thinking out the end game if you come up short. First, there's creator, writer and executive producer Vince Gilligan, who for a number of seasons helped make "The X-Files" the most intriguing thing on the small screen. Then there's Cranston, who sheds his goofy-dad persona from his days on "Malcolm in the Middle" to boldly transform into Walt White, a character beaten down, embarrassed and simply sullied by life, who wakes up and takes charge when it's nearly too late.

AMC picked up what for all the world looked like a loser - methamphetamine being the kind if drug that no advertiser would support, and possibly no audience would glom onto. And yet, the critically acclaimed series gives AMC its second impressive scripted series ("Mad Men" being the first), and the kind of gravitas needed to rebrand the channel. In short, everyone took a chance.

The only worry now is what happens next, since it appears that "Breaking Bad" is the kind of dark-horse series that just might have legs. Did anyone plan on that? Can Walt survive? What of that lung cancer? Can Gilligan keep up the pathos? And is AMC calling this a loss leader that's worth it?

We'll find out soon enough. Meanwhile, there are still two episodes left. And the series remains a testament to first getting it right artistically, then worrying about the audience.

-- "Lost" (Thursday, 9 p.m. ABC): Many good series eventually go bad from neglect - creative neglect. If that seems too harsh or simplistic, how about being deaf to the complaints of your core audience? It happens all the time (though these days, with the online component being crucial and many producers having their own blogs or personally scouring fan sites, it's happening less often).

Shows that are serialized especially need to be aware of viewer apathy. If you lose the loyalists, your show is dead. What "Lost" managed to do last season is notable. Its creators, J.J. Abrams and Damon Lindelof - two show runners who keep hyper-vigilant tabs on viewer feedback - responded to fan and critic complaints that the series was moving too slowly, that more questions were being raised than answered, and the complex mythology of the series was in danger of imploding instead of continuing to entertain.

And so they fixed it. The second half of Season 3 quickened considerably and many of the superfluous characters were done away with. More important was the announcement from the producers that there was an endgame to the series - it would go on for three more 16-episode seasons. That allowed them to not only imagine an end but work backward from it - which strengthened the story arc and made this season so thrilling and addictive. Though the strike will rob three episodes from this season, they will be added into the totals of the next two.

Viewers won't want to miss episodes of "Lost," which is now at the top of its game. Its milieu of castaways and strange-island happenings has never been more compelling. By having a willingness to course-correct, "Lost" found creative freedom. The boldest move yet was transitioning from "flashbacks" - which explored the background of each character in the first three seasons, to "flash-forwards," which is revealing their fates once they're off the island. A magnificent stroke.

-- "The Wire" (Sundays, 9 p.m., HBO): If any series has had an unflagging persistence of vision, this is the one. David Simon and his stable of enormously talented writers started off making a series about the detail-oriented failings of cops and drug dealers in Baltimore, then deftly expanded their sights to encompass institutional failure throughout the city (City Hall, public schools, the media, etc.) Perhaps the truly noble thing about "The Wire" is that it never panders to its audience and has always stayed true to its artistic standards. If that meant a major character died, so be it. Any fan of "The Wire" knows that it's a bleak ride. There's precious little room for sentimentality.

The breadth of the ambition in "The Wire" is likely what kept it from becoming more popular. The series does not go down easily or cut corners but tells stories slowly, densely, intricately, without much care to whether you're keeping up with the complications. It's no stretch to say that "The Wire" could never be duplicated on a broadcast network. Forget the swearing or violence - what would have killed it in the mainstream is its unwillingness to compromise artistically. Credit HBO for sticking with this series for five seasons. "The Wire," with only two episodes left, will ultimately be seen as a gift to television.

That is hard to overstate, really. Simon could have made the series more palatable, more sellable, but he didn't want to. Equally important, HBO never asked him to. Television is a business that wants as many episodes of "Law & Order" or "CSI" or "ER" as it can possibly manage. At some point, those shows ceased to be relevant, no matter how many spin-offs they generated or how much cast turnover there was. They become properties, business opportunities. Say what you want about the ending of "The Sopranos," but at least David Chase went out on his terms, guiding the series to the close he wanted. Not many writers (or series) get that chance. And it's incredibly special when they do.

"Breaking Bad," "Lost" and "The Wire" are in the beginning, middle and end stages of their acclaimed runs, each illustrating how greatness gets made.