There is TV, then there is Better Call Saul...

When I heard that a spin-off of Breaking Bad was being made, a show which focuses on the Saul Goodman character, I was surprised and not very excited at all. I thought it would be a less-serious comedy of sorts. Oh boy oh boy, how wrong was I.

Better Call Saul is pure and simple a refinement of Breaking Bad. It's the superior twin. More tightly written and focused. A nuanced tragedy, where, just like Breaking Bad, the laughs thin out as the seasons pass, only to be replaced by a searing tension as the reality of such lives is brought into harsh focus.

This is a show made by a man who excels at the craft, who understands how to tell a good story with relatable, believable characters. Flawed humans who change and grow organically, who react to their circumstances in a realistic manner, talk and behave like real people, instead of being cardboard cutouts used to make a story work or morons just spouting exposition and one-liners.

When we had Sopranos, we also had The Wire, Deadwood and others which met that high standard which Sopranos set. When Better Call Saul was on TV, there was a noticeable gap between it and everything else. Nothing came close, and nothing has since.

Shows like this are a dying breed which are slowly fading away into a sea of shallow, short attention-span catering and politically loaded nonsense.