Of all of the major television series made in the past decade that one might have thought would merit one spin-off, let alone two, Vince Gilligan’s Breaking Bad was not especially high on the list. A fantastically gripping and visceral tale of the rise and fall of one of the least likely crime lords ever to have appeared in fiction, schoolteacher-turned drug kingpin Walter White, aka “Heisenberg”, it moved seamlessly between black comedy, family drama and edge-of-seat suspense, to award-winning effect. Many would cite it as the finest thing that they have ever seen on television, thanks in no small part to Bryan Cranston’s performance as White, and, as it ended in bloody, poignant and thrilling fashion in 2013, to the strains of “Baby Blue” by Badfinger, there seemed no need for a continuation.
We do, however, live in an age when an attention-sated audience cannot get enough of a good thing, and so not only do we have the excellent prequel Better Call Saul, which focuses on how dodgy
