Bob Odenkirk’s fast-talking Saul Goodman will go down in history as one of TV’s most endearingly skeezy criminal lawyers, but on his upcoming AMC series Better Call Saul, a spinoff from the acclaimed Breaking Bad, he’s known by a different name: Jimmy McGill.
Today sees the arrival of a new teaser for the series, which arrives on AMC next February. There’s not much by way of footage from the actual show, but creators Vince Gilligan and Peter Gould do address some of the questions that they will set out to answer in Better Call Saul.
First and foremost on their minds: how did Saul Goodman become the character we learned to love and hate in equal measure on Breaking Bad? In the teaser, he claims that representing guilty people is not something he’s keen about, but Breaking Bad-era Saul has made defending guilty-as-sin individuals his specialty. What happened to cause the change of heart?
Odenkirk is rejoined in the spinoff by Jonathan Banks, reprising the role of fixer Mike Ehrmantraut. New additions include Michael McKean as Chuck (Saul’s brother), Patrick Fabian as Hamlin, Rhea Seehorn as Kim and Michael Mando as Nacho.
We’ll begin our journey to finding out exactly what sent Saul down a more immoral path when Better Call Saul premieres in February.
Here’s the official synopsis:
The series is set six years before Saul Goodman meets Walter White. When we meet him, the man who will become Saul Goodman is known as Jimmy McGill, a small-time lawyer searching for his destiny, and, more immediately, hustling to make ends meet. Working alongside, and, often, against Jimmy, is “fixer” Mike Ehrmantraut, a beloved character introduced in ‘Breaking Bad.’ The series will track Jimmy’s transformation into Saul Goodman, the man who puts “criminal” in “Criminal lawyer.” The series’ tone is dramatic, wove with dark humor.