Better Call Saul: How many seasons will there be and when will it end? The showrunners explain

The fourth season of the prequel brings us considerably closer to the events of Breaking Bad

Perhaps it's because the action unfolds at a much slower pace, but it's hard to believe that Better Call Saul is starting to close in on its forebear Breaking Bad in terms of length.

By the end of the current run there will be four seasons and 40 episodes of BCS, while BB ended after five seasons and 62 episodes (the final season being double the usual length).

The action in the prequel is starting to get closer to the events of the original now, which begs the question of when the two will meet and BCS will end.

According to the co-creators, it seems like (the yet to be commissioned) season 5 will likely be the last, but might also be 20 episodes rather than the usual 10.

When I mentioned how showrunner Peter Gould had previously said he didn't see BCS going on longer than BB, he replied: "I think I would stick with that.

"In an ideal world it would make a beautiful blu-ray or DVD set or whatever futuristic media may exist eventually to have the shows kind of bookend and be roughly the same number of episodes," he added, implying, I think, that he'd like to see Breaking Bad and Better Call Saul could be the same length as there would be a pleasing symmetry to this.

"But having said that, the big thing for us is not to outstay our welcome," he cautioned.

"I would stick with it. We are talking about roughly the same number of episodes as Breaking Bad.

"Though I have to tell you, if at the beginning of this you had told me we were going to do this many episodes about Walter White’s comedy sidekick lawyer I would have said you were crazy! The show has turned into a very different animal from frankly what I ever would have pictured when we got started."

Better Call Saul airs on AMC in the US and through Netflix worldwide.

Read our full interview with Gould and Vince Gilligan here.