Better Call Saul: Uno

 "You work for people who have sex with chopped off head?"

Straight into this prequel to Breaking Bad- you knew this was coming- and crikey, this is already good indeed, even if we do already know the central character and are looking for Easter Eggs (hello, Mike as tollboth man).

But this is divinely crafted by Mr Vince Gilligan himself. We start, fasciinatingly, with a moustachioed Saul running that bakery in Nebraska he casually mentioned at the end of Breaking Bad... and his life is safe, if paranoid; decent, materially ok... and symbolically in monochrome. No wonder he drinks cheap whisky and watched videotapes of his glory days.

The, we flash back... so abruptly I thought my telly was on the blink- to Albuquerque... and the good old days are not as the rose tinted glasses see the, Jimmy McGill is a struggling public defender, talented yet offered no hope by the system, despite the urgings of his very interesting brother Chuck- intelligent, principled, cultured and (we assume) dying by some disease, probably cancer, which is a ****.

The argument between the two men is pivotal- Chuck was a partner in a law film who got ill, and has been shafted, to his brother's extreme chagrin, yet he refuses to sue the firm (Did it cause his condition? I admire how we are not just being spoonfed.) out of loyalty to the staff. He and  Jimmy disagree, yet here are two good, decent men disagreeing on points of conscience. Jimmy may have been guilty of ice-based naughtiness in his youth, butbhe;s a good man... whom we know will become a deeply cynical, criminal-adjacent lawyer in a trajectory which we cannot but parallel with that of Walter White.

And his first attempt at such cynicism in practice- with two young, naive, pathetic conmen- leads us to... Tuco, whom we know of old.

Oh dear.

I'm hooked already,

Incidentally, I'll be blogging this weekly. The Marvel series (currently Hawkeye) will continue as scheduled. I'll keep on with The Rings of Power, next episode (I hope) tomorrow. I have one more episode of Sandman. Then I really ought to start Andor, as I note three episodes have dropped.

I'll start a neew series, probably something vintage, when the constant stream of new telly alllows!