It’s all good, man

There is a debate amongst television critics over which show can be declared the greatest ever. It’s a similar discourse to that perennial, what is cinema's greatest film (The Godfather, obviously). Except that the television debate is probably even tighter to call. One thing is certain: we’ve been in a golden era of TV drama since the turn of the Millennium, when The Sopranos was just hitting its stride, The Wire and Band Of Brothers were about to happen, and most right-minded individuals were saying that if it wasn’t for Hill Street Blues and, especially, Homicide: Life On The Street, none of these pieces of epic, cinematic television would have happened at all.

I was prepared to declare all bets off following The Sopranos when Breaking Bad came along. The Newark mob series had everything: Corleone-esque, Shakespearian tragedy; a modern take on suburban family life; male mental vulnerability; dark humour; a creative approach to sex and violence; and a cast so brilliantly assembled - and, so Italian-American - that the Emmy judging committee should probably have just taken the years 2000 to 2007 off with a ‘gone fishing’ sign swinging on the door. The Sopranos’ deliciously open-ended finale was barely six months-cold when the American cable network AMC gave a debut to a slow-burn show about a high school chemistry teacher who, facing up to turning 50 and a terminal cancer diagnosis, succumbs to an unusual form of mid-life crisis and reinvents himself as a methamphetamine kingpin in Albuquerque. Breaking Bad took its first season to get going, and that was clearly writer Vince Gilligan’s intention. Such was its plot and character development that it is, actually, still hard to pinpoint the exact moment that it hit stride. But, like any addiction, once you realise you're in too deep, it's too late. But, by the time Bryan Cranston’s Walter White/Heisenberg succumbed to injury at the end of Season 5, we had been dragged through an intoxicating rollercoaster, not dissimilar to that Tony Soprano took us on, as families were tested, friendships questioned, and plots and sub-plots got thicker and deeper.

Whether this was Gilligan’s writing process or not, Breaking Bad was an undoubted high point in the art of the story arc, as if he knew precisely how the show would evolve from the opening episode of Season 1 to the finale of Season 5. The same must be the case with Better Call Saul, the prequel-sequel which wittily traces the creation of shyster, knows-where-the-bodies-are-buried lawyer Saul Goodman, the attorney who kept Walter White safe. Because, as we reached the final episode yesterday of Season 4, it is possible that Better Call Saul is eclipsing its predecessor for utter brilliance. Once more, Gilligan has slow-burned it, cleverly building the story of conman Jimmy McGill’s attempts to break into alegal career in the shadow of his eccentric elder brother, Chuck, while sowing seeds of Breaking Bad back stories, including the rise of Gus Fring, the scheming fried chicken entrepreneur-come-ruthless meth cartel player, his enforcer Mike Ehrmantraut and the fiersome Salamancas.

With its fourth season, Gilligan has commenced the transition of McGill into Goodman, not quite Anakin Skywalker becoming Darth Vader, but certainly the creation of a vessel for the dark arts that will, in Breaking Bad, provide Odenkirk with a breakout character as the strip mall lawyer with a line in sharp patter and equally sharp thinking. Running through the season has been Jimmy’s inability to process his brother’s death at the end of Season 3, his slowly decaying relationship with fellow lawyer Kim Wexler (Rhea Seehorn), an ever-increasingly number of hints as to the source of Fring’s fractious - and, ultimately, fatal - relationship with the Salamancas. Meanwhile, Ehrmantraut has been tasked by Fring with overseeing work on creating the super meth lab that will figure in Breaking Bad, another scintilating nod ahead to the mother series (and, to be a bit of a nerd, another unintended Star Wars parallel, like seeing the Death Star under construction in Revenge Of The Sith...).

These are just a few nuggets from Better Call Saul’s fourth season, one which ends - no spoilers here - with Jimmy telling Kim that everything will be fine - "It's all good, man". Genius. Just as Gilligan pulled off so brilliantly with Breaking Bad, time in this universe runs slowly. Both Breaking Bad and Better Call Saul progress cleverly, at a subtle pace that reveals less than you realise and more than you know at the same time. Some might find this drip-feed of detail frustrating, agonising, even. But it is no less compelling. In the best traditions of soap opera, the need to find out what happens next is infuriating, but deliciously created in the process. Looking back over these last nine episodes of Better Call Saul the reveals have been peeled away like the skin of an onion. It is writing of an exquisite hue, television of an astonishing quality. If you've watched Breaking Bad you know how many of the Better Call Saul characters end up or, at least, how they come about. Even Jimmy's ill-fated brother Chuck and girlfriend Kim are vital ingredients to the slippery fish Saul Goodman seems fully-formed when he comes into contact with Walter and Jesse in original show. Better Call Saul even includes flash-forwards to Jimmy/Saul, post-Albuquerque, trying to maintain life, soul and anonymity in a Nebraska shopping mall where, as 'Gene Takovic' he runs a Cinnabon franchise.

Regardless of the subplots and parallel story strands of each episode, the focus always returns to McGill, and his transformation into Goodman. Such is the genius of Gilligan’s characterisation and Odenkirk’s performance of him, that it will always be difficult to be sympathetic to him. His vulnerabilities, stupidity and, occasionally, good nature are all on show. He is hero and anti-hero, protagonist and antagonist, morally as lacking as most, if not all other principle characters in the show, who are all in some way working to succeed behind the lines of criminality. As we wait eagerly for the next season - there's no clue as to whether a fifth will be the last, even though that would match Breaking Bad's perfect season structure - we know that there is a finite nature to all of Better Call Saul's characters, and yet we crave them. We want more of Ehrmantraut's survivalism, of Fring's utterly cold criminality, even the desert blandness of Albuquerque and the sand-washed normality of the American West that provides such a flattened canvas for the drug crime on which both Better Call Saul and Breaking Bad pivot. And, weirdly, we want Jimmy to succeed, just as we did Walter White. There is no morality tale here: White may have had somewhat best intentions to monetising his chemistry expertise, but he had, as soon as he decided to take that path, crossed over to the dark side. McGill was probably already there. Now we wait to see how far he goes there. Season 5 cannot come soon enough. It’s all good, man.