Jonathan Storm: Entertaining drama of crystal-meth maker

'American" used to be AMC's first name, and the cable channel is living up to it, adopting the traditional Yankee business technique of going bigger, if not necessarily better, than the competition.

The product is

Breaking Bad

, premiering tonight at 10, thoroughly watchable, with crackerjack performances from ex-

Malcolm in the Middle

dad Bryan Cranston and perennial TV visiting actor Aaron Paul. The series would be truly super if it didn't evoke a nagging copycat vibe.

Formerly all movies, all the time, AMC took a big step toward matching the premium-channel programmers during the summer. The strikingly original

Mad Men

, a period piece with fascinating characters and plotting, rivals anything that's ever been on HBO.

But for its second new series trick, AMC turns Showtime mimic, offering the story of a lifelong nebbish who responds to a setback by trying out for the drug trade.

In Showtime's

Weeds

, adorable Mary Louise Parker turns to selling marijuana to keep the family budget in the black. In keeping with the nature of its widow's wares,

Weeds

combines considerable wackiness with its dark sitcomedy.

Cranston's AMC character, Walter White, makes crystal methamphetamine, a heinous drug that has eroded health nationwide. So maybe it's not surprising that

Breaking Bad

is darker and more dramatic than

Weeds

.

Nonetheless, creator Vince Gilligan, from West Virginia, where meth labs have replaced whiskey stills in the criminal manufacturing landscape, does manage to sprinkle laughs with murder, addictive drugs, and the terminal lung cancer that triggers White's career change. Even viewers who think

Weeds

is the end will find plenty new to like in

Breaking Bad

.

White, who once contributed research to a Nobel Prize-winning project, has completely failed to reach his potential. Now he teaches high school and works after hours at a car wash to make ends meet.

But he knows his chemistry, and after seeing all the money his brother-in-law, a DEA agent, confiscated in a meth-lab bust, White concocts a plan to provide for his family after he's gone. (On Showtime, Parker's second husband was the drug-enforcement guy.)

Creating a stunning odd couple, he teams with Paul's Jesse Pinkman, one of his former student flunk-ees who's already in the biz and knows the ropes. White the wizard cooks up a batch of high-grade crank ("glass" to the cognoscenti), Jesse offers it to one of his connections, and the games begin.

It's hard to uphold moral values when you're a TV critic, but two drug-dealer shows looks like a trend, and while my heart goes out to Walter White, I sure hope he winds up in very bad straits. Meth is a scourge, and there is simply no honor in presenting it any other way.

Still,

Breaking Bad

is as artful as anything currently on the tube. There was always complexity bubbling beneath the benign exterior of Cranston's Hal in

Malcolm

, and it boils over here in one of the finest TV performances of the season. Plus, like Hal, Walter runs around in his underpants a lot, and that's always fun.

The show, however, offers much more. It's unpredictable and stimulating, like the drug that White manufactures, but it produces a much safer high.

(Viewers who have missed

Mad Men

, the best new show of 2007, should not overlook AMC's gift of reruns, beginning tonight. The channel will televise each episode of

Breaking Bad

twice on Sundays at 10 and 11 p.m. Following them, into April, will come

Mad Men

at midnight. Set VCRs or DVRs accordingly.)

Television

Breaking Bad

Debuts at 10 tonight on AMC