Better Call Saul: Season 1 (2015)

Over the last year or two, a certain kind of television narrative has started to fade away. Where The Sopranos ushered in a wave of solitary, tortured, male antiheroes – a trend that culminated with Breaking Bad – we’ve started to move towards looser, more flexible ensemble casts, often centred on women or queer communities. In many ways, the first season of Better Call Saul is one of the most poetic and poignant instances of that transition. A prequel to Breaking Bad, it inevitably recalls the trajectory of that great series – once again, we’re confronted with a man down on his luck, a man staring precarity in the face, a man prepared to do just about anything. This time around, it’s Jimmy McGill – soon to be Saul Goodman – instead of Walter White, but the backdrop, supporting cast and visual style – immediately and distinctively Gilligan – can’t help but recall Walt’s struggles from the very first frame. So it’s even more striking to be reminded that Jimmy is no Walt, and that his struggles aren’t going to reach the same sublime depths of despair, depravity and disillusionment. That’s not to say that his struggles aren’t real – as in the final season of Breaking Bad we open in New Hampshire (one of many touches that make this feel like a sequel proper rather than a prequel), where a washed-out, black-and-white palette introduces us to Jimmy in a state of utter desperation. It could be some time before the events of Breaking Bad, it could be some time after – it’s not clear – but it creates a sense of existential dread and despair that cuts across the day-glo palette of the series that follows. And yet what Gilligan does with that despair is very different this time around. Although there are incredibly suspenseful moments in pretty much every episode, the ratcheted-up, unbearable intensity of Breaking Bad is utterly gone, replaced with a more provisional, peripatetic vibe that gives Jimmy a bit of a journeyman feel, as he tries to co-ordinate his relationship with his brother (Michael McKean) and sometime-girlfriend (Rhea Seehorn), as well as a couple of characters from Breaking Bad who start to become integrated into the narrative, most notably Mike (Jonathan Banks), who’s even better here than in the original series. As a result, Gilligan seems more willing to leave Albuquerque, but also more attuned to Albuquerque as a character when we’re in it, taking the lush, fluorescent, 80s mise-en-scenes of Breaking Bad to their logical conclusion, culminating with a John Hughes tribute in the final episode. Where Odenkirk often functioned as comic relief against the high-octane backdrop of Breaking Bad, against this more modulated backdrop he’s more fleshed out and utterly wonderful – charismatic in his resilience and melancholy in his resignation, he never quite manages to commit to either, which drives the series into a deep, soulful groove from the very first episode. Although it’s framed as a prequel, then, it very much feels like a sequel, a character cast in the shadow of the last great man, and series shot in the wake of what’s been described as the most unbeatable series of all time. Still, both the man and the series manage to get by in that situation - and this time around, it's very much about just getting by, rather than any kind of Heisenbergian victory over the future - with all the provisional, off-the-cuff ingenuity that Saul does best.