Johan Renck brings a music-video director’s feel for rhythm to bleak television drama. We rate his contribution to Breaking Bad, but his preference for directing whole miniseries makes sense: he wants to decide how the work holds together.
Fi1m perspective
An upbeat track accompanies illicit activity, and the cutting gives the business a disconcerting ease. This is one of Johan Renck’s television habits, carried over from music videos, and Breakage (2009) puts his feel for music and rhythm to use within Breaking Bad (2008). We rate his ability to make a sequence move without lightening the material around it. There is pleasure in the pace, even when the people involved give us little reason to feel comfortable.
Renck directed three episodes of the series: Breakage, Más and Hermanos. We were frightened by Breaking Bad because Bryan Cranston makes Walter White’s excuses sound like something a person might actually tell himself, and the programme examines them closely. That performance matters more to our enthusiasm than any individual flourish of direction, and the series is too substantial a shared achievement to credit to one visiting director. Its cleverness can become a nuisance; our praise for Renck’s rhythmic skill is not a request for more of it in every scene.
He began by directing his own music videos before making videos and commercials for others, so the attention to timing has a practical history. His first feature, Downloading Nancy (2008), received mixed-to-negative reviews, but prompted Vince Gilligan to bring him into Breaking Bad. The more telling move was towards directing complete miniseries: The Last Panthers (2015), followed by all five episodes of Chernobyl (2019). Taking responsibility for the whole run gave his preference for dark, austere material more room than an occasional episode could.
Renck approaches miniseries as long films, shooting across episodes and pursuing a unified visual style. His collaborators include writer-producer Craig Mazin, a useful reminder that this control still operates alongside somebody else’s writing. We find the sustained tone a stronger reason to seek out his work than darkness alone, which is hardly scarce on television. With Spaceman (2024), his second feature, he returned to films, but we would begin with the television work. Start with Breaking Bad, then try a miniseries he has directed from beginning to end.
Biography
Johan Renck is a Swedish director of music videos, television and film. Born in Uppsala, he initially worked as a singer-songwriter under the name Stakka Bo and had an international hit with the single "Here We Go" in 1993.
Renck began directing in the early 1990s. He formed the production company Renck Åkerlund Films with Jonas Åkerlund in 1994 and later directed music videos and commercials for artists including Madonna. His television credits include three episodes of Breaking Bad (2009–2011), one episode of The Walking Dead (2010), episodes of Vikings (2013), Bates Motel (2013), Halt and Catch Fire (2014), Bloodline (2015) and the miniseries Chernobyl (2019), for which he received a Primetime Emmy Award for directing. His feature films are Downloading Nancy (2008) and Spaceman (2024).
