The high school teacher hero of AMC’s “Breaking Bad” has cancer, but even there, the action is less about his struggle with his disease than about his decision to start a rollicking life of crime as a meth dealer. Except, of course, that she too has a secret: melanoma. The story begins after Cathy has been told she has a year to live. Ms. Linney makes it understood before uttering a word. “The Big C” is framed as a comedy: Cathy’s imminent death sentence unleashes another, freer side of her. She doesn’t tell anyone about her cancer, not even her husband, Paul (Oliver Platt), or her son, Adam (Gabriel Basso), or her brother, Sean (John Benjamin Hickey), a homeless ecology nut who lives out of Dumpsters. “The Big C” is unlikely to let Cathy magically off the hook. Some of the black humor is the kind that cancer patients are prone to share among themselves. Thank you for subscribing. — it tries very hard not to take the expected path.Too hard, unfortunately. With " The Big C " (premieres 10:30 p.m., Aug. 16, on Showtime), all of the vital signs looked good from the start. Created by Darlene Hunt; Ms. Hunt, Jenny Bicks, Neal H. Moritz, Vivian Cannon and Laura Linney, executive producers; Mark Kunerth, Michael Engler and Merrill H. Karpf, co-executive producers.
– Critics are split on The Big C, Showtime's Laura Linney-starring comedy about a woman with cancer living out the last year of her life, which debuts tonight: The cast is perhaps a bit large for a half-hour show, writes Mary McNamara in the Los Angeles Times, and the whole thing is so determined to be unsentimental that it is instead jammed "with so many over-blown characters and wacky antics that it's impossible to attach meaning to any of them." Heather Havrilesky agrees, noting that the show's attempts to "lighten up" the subject matter turn the whole thing into a "kooky, unsexy" ride that will make you "cringe and beg to be put out of your misery," she writes on Salon. But Alessandra Stanley likes it—especially Linney, "who rarely sounds a false note and here has perfect pitch," she writes in the New York Times. "The series is at its best when sardonic and subdued. Some of the black humor is the kind that cancer patients are prone to share among themselves." For more on the widely admired Linney, click here.