HOLLYWOOD — It would be easy to be put off by "Breaking Bad," a new AMC series about a high school chemistry teacher hit by the one-two punch of a midlife crisis and a diagnosis of terminal cancer, who sets himself up, or tries to, in the manufacture of crystal meth. It's possible for a housewife dealing marijuana to come off as charming, but speed kills.

And then there are those ads, showing star Bryan Cranston (late of "Malcolm in the Middle") wearing white cotton briefs and the saddest and most disturbing of mustaches.

But "Breaking Bad" is very good; it's creator Vince Gilligan is a veteran of "The X-Files," a show that specialized in stories about small lives messily going to pieces.

Like AMC's other current dramatic series, "Mad Men," it's about a man escaping an old life into a new one. Walter White is as pale a figure as his name, an Albuquerque, N.M., teacher whose love of his subject is shared by none of his students — or anyone else in his world. He has a pregnant wife, Skyler (Anna Gunn), and a teenage son with cerebral palsy (RJ Mitte).

Looking for a way to leave some money to his family, Walt blackmails an ex-student, Jesse (Aaron Paul), into taking him on as a partner in the manufacturer of methamphetamine. Jesse calls him "Mr. White," a sign that, although he considers Walt a pack of trouble, he also has some vestigial reflexive respect for him.

Apart from that death sentence, his life's not so bad, and his rut initially plays like a dramatic contrivance. But once that's settled, and things go off the rails, it's all completely gripping.