The Netflix Crime Thriller Series Fans Will Love To Binge
2022 saw titles like The Walking Dead, DC’s Legends of Tomorrow, black-ish, and more come to a close, but for fans of the Breaking Bad universe, it was an especially tough one as Better Call Saul checked out of the office for good. The show acted as a prequel series to Breaking Bad, and chronicled the life of Bob Odenkirk’s Jimmy McGill, a conman who would come to be known as the crooked Breaking Bad lawyer Saul Goodman. Although the series went off the air more than a year ago, all six seasons are now available for Netflix subscribers to dive into.
The early episodes of Better Call Saul pick up in Albuquerque, New Mexico, during the early 2000s, just a few years before Saul Goodman’s path ever crossed with Walter White’s (Bryan Cranston). Audiences are introduced to the character who was then known as Jimmy McGill, a man who was once on the wrong side of the law but wants to reach a sort of redemption by becoming a criminal defense attorney. But, Jimmy just can’t seem to stay out of trouble and the series inevitably turns into a telling of how the troubled lawyer continued to fall from grace.
Meanwhile, fans of Breaking Bad also got more of a backstory into Jonathan Banks’s tough-as-nails ex-cop, Mike Ehrmantraut, and learned about how he became the discreetly professional killer that we’d later meet in the main series. Filling out the cast for Better Call Saul included stars such as Michael McKean (This Is Spinal Tap), Rhea Seehorn (Cooper’s Bar), and Giancarlo Esposito (The Boys), who reprised his role as the ruthless drug kingpin Gus Fring from Breaking Bad.
Just as Breaking Bad’s final season was winding down, with the second half of Walter White and Jesse Pinkman’s grandiose goodbye right around the corner, Breaking Bad’s creator Vince Gilligan, alongside Peter Gould, revealed that they were in the midst of developing a spin-off. At that point in time, the duo told their followers that the working title was Better Call Saul but that, as of that point, nothing more had been secured. This certainly gave some hope to Breaking Bad’s devoted audience who were sad to see the show bowing out after five engaging and successful seasons.
After going back and forth on how the spin-off would frame Odenkirk’s wise-cracking lawyer, the creative partners finally realized that Saul was so much more than the supporting character viewers had come to know and love in Breaking Bad. It was then that they realized that a prequel storyline would suit Better Call Saul the best, giving them the same drama and comedy tools to build with that made the original series such a success in the first place.
As is the case for many spin-offs, those shaping Better Call Saul had to be careful to not lean too heavily on the world and characters of Breaking Bad but also knew they had to sprinkle some of its magic in to capture audiences’ attention. To accomplish this, they crafted the main story around Saul but used black-and-white scenes as a way to skip to the future and tie in Saul’s work with Walter White with his past.
Considered to be one of the best-written, produced, and acted dramas in recent years, it will shock many to know that Better Call Saul never landed an Emmy Award, although it was nominated a whopping 53 times. You can check out one of the biggest snubs in awards history as Better Call Saul is now streaming in its entirety on Netflix.
