After 61 immaculate episodes, this cinematic, immersive drama ends today. It was visually beautiful, detail-oriented TV that became so much more than Vince Gilligan’s previous show
Photograph: Greg Lewis/AMC/Sony Pictures TelevisionPhotograph: Greg Lewis/AMC/Sony Pictures Televisionarewell Saul Goodman: the star of the spin-off we never saw coming.
Just as Frasier spun off improbably from Cheers, so Saul emerged from the corpse of Breaking Bad. Over six series,evolved into a more profound and beautiful drama about human corruption than its predecessor. It mutated into something visually more sumptuous than Breaking Bad, while never, for a moment, losing its verbal dexterity and moral compass.
There is, Vince Gilligan and his fellow creatives know, something soothing about watching someone do work they are proud of – manual, meticulous, informed work that proves the craft antidote to the daily grind . Beyond the bullshit, there is, in Gilligan’s worldview, a respect for the work and for the honouring of it by its depiction on screen – even if that work is cooking pure meth or manipulating the legal system.