THE INSIDE STORY ON...

BETTER CALL SAUL

Here’s a telly addict challenge: name a spin-off from a great show that’s even better than the original. Kelsey Grammer achieved it with Frasier, miraculously wittier and more moving than the wonderful Cheers. The genius of Robin Williams made Mork And Mindy more memorable and far funnier than Happy Days.

But in the 21st century, arguably only one spin-off has done it – Better Call Saul. The prequel to Breaking Bad, the Netflix series about a terminally ill chemistry teacher who turns to making and selling drugs to provide for his family when he’s gone, Better Call Saul is superior in every way, with plot twists, in-jokes, high-stakes tension and dramatic set-pieces that mesmerise the viewer.

The title character is slippery lawyer Saul Goodman, the nom de guerre of chancer and former conman Jimmy Mcgill, played by Bob Odenkirk. Though he’s a major character in Breaking Bad, we know little about his back story, except that he handles legal business for a drugs cartel headed by ‘the Chicken Man’ Gus Fring.

Fring uses his chain of fast-food restaurants in New Mexico as a front for his smuggling network. How the two got together, the other characters in Breaking Bad never stop to ask. Better Call Saul

traces that story… very slowly. One of the most memorable images in Breaking Bad was a tortoise with a bomb strapped to its shell, working its way across the desert into the midst of a group of people… to blow up with lethal effect. Every ten-episode season of Saul is like that. There’s always a bomb on the horizon, heading our way.

Though the slow build-up of tension is lost if you cherry-pick episodes, a blast of the show’s explosive impact can be enjoyed by watching ‘Bagman’ – part eight of season five. Blackmailed into picking up drug money from Mexican gangsters, Jimmy is stranded in the desert after a shootout. His struggles to

Plot twists, in-jokes, high-stakes tension and dramatic set-pieces mesmerise the viewer

survive, alternating with the despairing realisation that he’s likely to die there, is Better Call Saul at its best – both an edge-of-the-seat thriller and an emotional sucker punch.

Nominated for 19 Emmys and four Golden Globes (and, bizarrely, winning none of them), the show’s return was greeted eagerly when the final series began airing in weekly instalments in mid April. Fans are desperate to find out how Jimmy’s romance ends with wife Kim Wexler (Rhea Seehorn), an ambitious lawyer whose career is on the up. By the time Breaking Bad begins, she’s gone. But why? That’s another bomb on the horizon, but the resolution of the mystery was almost prevented when Odenkirk, 59, had a heart attack on set while filming the final season. It took three zaps from a defibrillator to stabilise him, and production was halted for weeks. Thankfully he recovered after surgery.

You can watch Better Call Saul if you’ve never seen Breaking Bad. That might even be the best way to get to know Mike Ehrmantraut (Jonathan Banks), the former cop working as a car park attendant when he first encounters Jimmy. Mike doesn’t stay a car park attendant, but the changes in his life come slowly. This show is a tortoise. And it’s carrying a lot of high explosives.

Bob Odenkirk as Saul and (inset) with Gus Fring