Don’t drink and drive – but if you do, call me

Uttered by criminal lawyer and opportunist Saul Goodman (Bob Odenkirk) in the final season of Breaking Bad, the words “Don’t drink and drive – but if you do, call me” give you an idea of the unscrupulous and charismatic character he was throughout the now-classic series. But Saul wasn’t always like that.

In Breaking Bad, Saul Goodman becomes Walter and Jesse’s legal counsel as their meth cooking operation grows. Jesse convinces Walt to meet with Saul by explaining that in this business “you don’t want a criminal lawyer... you want a _criminal _lawyer”. It becomes clear that no job is too small, or too depraved, for Goodman, who provides invaluable assistance to the pair from series two onwards.

Whether it’s laundering drug money, disposing of incriminating evidence or cleaning up crime scenes, Saul can solve all their problems, for a fee. When asked how he gets these things done, he simply answers, “Let’s just say I know a guy… who knows a guy… who knows another guy.” Walt and Jesse soon become his major clients as the drug money rolls in and their situation becomes more complicated.

Saul Goodman provided light relief and gallows humour in the dark storyline that is Walter White’s transformation. Walt goes from being a chemistry teacher with a cancer diagnosis to the feared crystal meth cook and millionaire drug kingpin ‘Heisenberg’. When the streak of luck inevitably ends, every character suffers. Goodman’s last line in Breaking Bad was “It’s all over.” Not so. Now Saul Goodman, real name Jimmy McGill, has a television series of his own. Set in 2002, Better Call Saul is a spin-off prequel series written by _Breaking Bad _creators Vince Gilligan and Peter Gould, that follows the small-time Albuquerque lawyer seven years before he becomes Walt and Jesse’s attorney.

Jimmy McGill’s situation at the start of the series is every bit as dark and depressing as Walter White’s. Both series are essentially about intelligent, solitary men who feel financially pressured into breaking the law. Better Call Saul will inexorably feature a pivotal moment when Jimmy’s idealism completely crashes, and he becomes Saul Goodman. This is going to be a darkly comic, bitter sweet show.

The series cuts between Saul’s life before and after meeting Walt, and has already featured a few of the most memorable characters from Breaking Bad. The audience is already aware of what happens after Saul first meets with Walt, but what happened in the time leading up to establishing his strip-mall law office in Albuquerque, New Mexico? It is this question that Breaking Bad fans want an answer to, and Better Call Saul will give them their answer.

It’s too early to know whether this series is going to become as popular as its parent drama, but three episodes in and the show is shaping up nicely. By tapping into the huge pre-existing fan base, the opening episode of _Better Call Saul _broke the record for the highest overall viewership of a series premiere in US cable history. The first season consists of ten episodes and the series has already been renewed for a second season of 13 episodes.

This series will be judged on the quality of the central performance, and Bob Odenkirk knows this. Luckily, he has had several years to master the ‘slick-talking sleazey lawyer’ role and Odenkirk plays it to perfection. Better Call Saul is judiciously humanising the slightly two-dimensional character that viewers enjoyed so much in its parent drama, in a way that feels familiar to any fan of Vince Gilligan’s previous work. The series is confidently shot and moves at the pace of a sloth on valium, but somehow the lingering scenes only serve to intensify the emotions of the characters and add gravitas to a given situation. Crucially, Better Call Saul never feels too slow (Perhaps it would if one hadn’t already been exposed to dozens of hours of Breaking Bad). The two shows are stylistically identical to each other. Saul’s story is a complex one and those involved in making the series understand that they should take their sweet time in telling it.

Better Call Saul is another dark character study that painstakingly details the metamorphosis of its protagonist from a struggling citizen to a professional criminal. If anyone can do it, and do it right, it’s Vince Gilligan.

Better Call Saul premiered on February 8th and episodes are uploaded on Netflix UK every Wednesday.