5 actors breaking good - phenomenally good

In the span of less than a week, one new series joined three returning series to showcase some of the finest actors on television. Add in HBO's miniseries "The Pacific," which recently began its 10-episode run, and suddenly there's a master class of exceptional performances on the small screen.

While it's true that television is a writer's medium - though select directors can put their stamp on the look of a show through the pilot - no amount of great dialogue can rise to brilliance if the actors can't carry their weight.

Yes, there are plenty of vibrant, strong performances in broadcast television, but many actors of the highest caliber avoid the watered-down, mass-appeal network fare in favor of meatier roles with fewer viewers on cable.

Bryan Cranston, starring as a chemistry teacher with terminal cancer who turns to making meth to support his struggling family in AMC's "Breaking Bad," has won the best actor Emmy two consecutive times.

Cranston went from cancer-stricken milquetoast to morally challenged drug kingpin in the course of 20 superb episodes, one of the most complicated but convincing performances in ages (and justly rewarded with those Emmys). But Cranston's essential element is a combination of empathy and sympathy that he elicits with his Walt White character. He's a beaten man and the cancer seems like the knockout blow. When he "breaks bad" and starts making the purest form of the dirtiest drug, there's sympathy for a man trying desperately to help his struggling family. As the slippery moral slope begins to undo Walt and he's enveloped in the drug trade, it's essential that Cranston imbue the character with whatever remaining humanity he can find or the audience will flee.

It's nothing short of a tour de force.