That's a shame. Just because of her dad's smalls, she's missing out on an impressive series. An incisive blend of black comedy and edgy drama, Breaking Bad is an award-winning hit in the US, where two seasons have aired and a third will premiere in March. Among other prizes, its trophy cabinet houses four Emmy Awards, including two successive gongs for Cranston as best lead actor.

"The mantel's not empty any more," says Cranston, who had never won an Emmy, despite three nominations for playing the dad on sitcom Malcolm in the Middle. In Breaking Bad, Cranston is Walter White, a talented scientist who has, in the words of his obnoxious brother-in-law, "a brain the size of Wisconsin". Unfortunately, Walter is sinking into a debilitating, depressing numbness thanks to the myriad pressures of suburban life. He used to be a research chemist with exciting prospects; now he teaches science to sarcastic high schoolers, struggling to provide a meagre existence for a wife (Anna Gunn) and a teenage son with cerebral palsy (RJ Mitte). Each day, the Bunsen burner in Walt's soul burns a little dimmer. Then, two wonderful things happen. (Warning: spoilers follow.) One, he is told he has a terminal illness. Two, his cop brother-in-law takes him along for a drug bust. The idea hits him like an explosion: he should cook up drugs to provide for his family after his death. So he hooks up with drop-kick former student Jesse (Aaron Paul), customises a mobile meth lab and goes to work.

The ensuing metamorphosis would have impressed Ovid as Walt transforms from inert family man to volatile drug dealer. Rejuvenated by his death sentence, he becomes lusty, bold and unpredictable. "Walt was comfortably numb," Cranston says. "There was a lack of emotion. Nothing affected him, until this explosion of emotion was created by this death sentence. The irony is, he's more alive than at any time in the past 20 years."

Energised by the bad news, he confronts a young jock who teases his son, he cuts his boss (at his second job) down to size and he surprises his wife. "Walt, is that you?" she asks, as he takes her roughly. Cranston was just as lusty when he accepted the part. "I didn't have any hesitancy in taking on this role," he says. "To me, Breaking Bad is not about a drug dealer, it's about a man, about the decisions a human being makes and how that has a rippling effect on everyone around him. For a very, very smart man scholastically, he makes this very stupid decision and now for the rest of his life, however long that lasts, he has to pay for it. It's a tangled web he's woven."

Morally, as the protagonist cooks up hard drugs to make money to secure his family's future, the show raises intriguing questions. Like Dexter or Nurse Jackie, Walt does bad things for good reasons. "It struck a chord with me as a man, a husband and a father," Cranston says. "This is how we're wired, to hunt and provide and have a sense of responsibility. I felt sympathetic to Walt and his plight. I tried to answer, 'Why would he do this?' And I answered it by saying that he hasn't done anything surprising his whole adult life because of missed opportunities. He's in a depressed state. I don't know any person who wants to leave that as a legacy, that withering away, on top of leaving his family destitute."

For Cranston, a large part of the appeal was the way creator Vince Gilligan skipped back and forth between drama and comedy. "That's done by design," Cranston says. "I think any really well-respected and received piece of literary television will have the combination of levity interwoven into the drama. And also vice versa, pathos interwoven into comedy. That's much more satisfying for viewers. It gives a picture of life as it really is." It certainly makes for a change from Malcolm in the Middle, the enduring sitcom that ran for seven seasons from 2000 until 2006. There, Cranston played Hal, the embattled father who, like Walt, struggled amid the quotidian vicissitudes of family life. Unlike Walt, however, Hal didn't cook up A-grade crystal meth while dressed in little more than white Y-fronts.

Surprisingly, Cranston sees profound similarities between Walt and Hal. "Well, they both wear tightey whitey underwear," he says. "Actually, I was shocked when I saw that written in the script for Breaking Bad. At first I tried to get away from that but then I realised that here, the same underwear told a different story. It was a manifestation of Walt's stunted emotional growth.

"And that underwear is just funny — although Walter White can't think that it's funny. In his world, nothing's really funny. But I think the characters do have some crossover. They are both good-hearted men who accept their responsibilities as parents and spouses. They both love and adore their wife and family and yet both are basically unfulfilled in their own way. Both are somehow depressed. Given the set of circumstances Walt has, I think Hal may have done something similar. Fortunately, he didn't have the depth of education to try something that devious." Cranston has fond memories of Malcolm in the Middle, a surprisingly fresh exponent of an often dull genre that ran for 151 episodes. "I'm positive Breaking Bad won't make it to that number," he says. "I think that a television series, like a feature film, should be just as long as it needs to be for the story it wants to tell but not longer. It's meant to be temporary, like life itself."

With season three due to air in the US this year, Cranston hopes season four will get the green light soon. Malcolm in the Middle ended at the right time, he says, but its conclusion was, nonetheless, sad. "You have to leave what has become a family," Cranston says. "Everybody goes their separate ways and you just hope you bump into them again."

Cranston stays in touch with cast members, including Erik Per Sullivan, who played Dewey, the youngest sibling. "I was very happy that he asked me to write a reference for him for the University of Southern California, where he is now a freshman. Little Dewey's now in college." One project Cranston undertook with the Malcolm in the Middle team was KidSmartz, a DVD that bills itself as a "guide to abduction prevention for parents and children" and is supported by the US National Centre for Missing and Exploited Children.

Another piece of Cranston trivia is that he's an ordained minister. "When I was going to college back in the '70s, my brother and I befriended a man called Reverend Bob, a hold-over from the hippie era who married people for a living. Accidentally, one day he booked two weddings at the same time in different locations. He said, 'Oh gosh, I messed up. You wanna marry 'em?' So he put the certificate in the typewriter and sent it off to the Secretary of State and voila! I was a minister. So I did the wedding, made $150, drank champagne and got the phone number of the maid of honour. It was a good day."

All of which means that Breaking Bad is a radical departure. From a background as an ordained minister who promotes child safety, Cranston has become, to quote one headline, "America's favourite meth dealer". Has Breaking Bad sparked any public protest? Conservative ire? "When we were promoting it, I thought we were going to get hit hard," Cranston says. "But we have not received any bad press that I can think of. The critics have loved it and no family organisations have picketed it."

So far, it's all good. What's more, on Breaking Bad, as on Malcolm in the Middle, Cranston has had the chance to direct several episodes. This allowed him to cast his 16-year-old daughter Taylor in a small role. "I put her in the first episode of the third season," Cranston says. "I was directing the episode, which called for a sad, 16-year-old girl. So I offered it to Taylor. She was nervous and apprehensive, because it was her first professional role but then she jumped at it."

Funny that: it's easier for Cranston to get his daughter to co-star than to watch. Breaking Bad premieres on ABC2 on Friday at 9.30pm.