What to watch this week

"Breaking Bad" (with Bryan Cranston, above) and "Everything's Cool" lead this week's picks.

All times Central.

TONIGHT

In the opening scene of “Breaking Bad” (9 p.m., AMC), we meet chemistry teacher Walt White (“Malcolm in the Middle's” Bryan Cranston), whose RV has broken down in the desert under, shall we say, questionable circumstances. He's with a younger man, and he has no pants. But as it turns out, that's not the half of it. From what I've seen, this could be another breakthrough show for AMC, a channel that's come out of nowhere thanks to its summer sleeper hit, “Mad Men.” Co-starring is Anna Gunn as Walt's pregnant wife and R.J. Mitte as their teenage son, who has cerebral palsy as well as teenage-son issues.

Barbara Kopple has directed some of the most powerful hours of documentary film, including Oscar winner “Harlan County, U.S.A.” and the Dixie Chicks protest film “Shut Up and Sing.” “The Music in Me” (7 p.m., Disney Channel) is not in that league, but Kopple insisted to me that this reality series -- filmed behind the scenes at a Texas theater company where high schoolers stage their own version of Disney's “High School Musical” -- was as much a labor of love as anything else she's done. I'll have to take her word for it; I'm not a regular Disney Channel watcher, so I missed the 12 short films that aired during commercial breaks last fall leading up to tonight's less than satisfying 28-minute finale.

TUESDAY

In “Everything's Cool,” cheeky eco-mentary makers Judith Helfand and Daniel B. Gold find a new way to talk about global warming -- namely by filming the people who actually talk about global warming. It's not easy finding a new way into an issue that most people seem to have made their minds up about, but this enjoyable film does, with profiles of people on both sides of the greenhouse-gases issue: those who devote their lives to sounding the alarm and those who are paid to hit the snooze button. The film airs at 8 p.m. on Sundance Channel, during its weekly night of “Green” programming.

“A Son's Sacrifice” is one of the best hours of the PBS docu-series “Independent Lens” I've seen this season. Airing at 10 p.m. on KCPT, it tells the story about Imran, a young Muslim who goes to college, then into the advertising industry, only to turn his back on it and take over his father's Halal slaughterhouse in Queens, N.Y. Halal is kosher to Muslims, and with his English-speaking, corporate ways (initially, he has no idea how to kill a lamb), Imran is not always considered kosher by his father's old-school clientele. Pop's faith in his only son is not exactly complete, either -- but their clashes, and some of the amazing real-life, uh, slices of life shown here make for a fascinating hour.

WEDNESDAY

A lot of really terrible hours of television have had one thing in common: They got a huge ratings boost by following “American Idol” on Fox. (“Unan1mous,” anyone?) Now comes “The Moment of Truth” (8 p.m., Fox 4), a reality show where people agree to answer a series of increasingly awkward questions for money while strapped to a polygraph. Sample: “Have you ever touched a female co-worker inappropriately?” Answer from contestant: “Yes.” Contestant's wife, sitting nearby: “That's why you sleep on the couch.”