Returning: Breaking Bad

Breaking Bad fans, get set for the last 8 episodes with Walter White.

Showcase will express the episodes within five hours of the US broadcast from Monday next week.

That makes the Monday line-up now True Blood, The Newsroom, Dexter and Breaking Bad -all first-run, all express from the US. A killer line-up (literally in some cases).

Meanwhile SBS 2 will also screen Talking Bad, a weekly panel discussion on the final episodes hosted by comedian Chris Hardwick from 11:20pm Monday August 12.

Breaking Bad follows protagonist Walter White (Bryan Cranston), a chemistry teacher who lives in New Mexico with his wife Skyler (Anna Gunn) a toddler and a teenage son (RJ Mitte) who has cerebral palsy. Walt is diagnosed with Stage III cancer and given a prognosis of two years left to live. With a new sense of fearlessness based on his medical prognosis, and a desire to secure his family’s financial security, he chooses to enter a dangerous world of drugs and crime and ascends to power in this world. The series explores how a fatal diagnosis, such as Walt’s, releases a typical man from the daily concerns and constraints of normal society and follows his transformation from mild family man to a kingpin of the drug trade.

At the end of Season 5 part one, Jesse (Aaron Paul) abandoned the meth business and parted ways with Walt, who claimed to Skyler that he, too, was finished. Yet, in one of the series’ most pivotal moments, Hank (Dean Norris) discovered his unassuming brother-in-law Walt is in fact the elusive dealer Heisenberg he has been tracking for so long.

In the highly anticipated series’ conclusion, the sun begins to set on Walt’s tenuous empire as the world around him begins to unravel and he finds himself as anything but “the king.” Yet, even when all hope might be lost, Walt refuses to back down — determined to fight until the bitter end.

Monday August 12 at 6.30pm (and 10.30pm primetime) on Showcase.

Updated.