Better Call Saul episode 1 review: Breaking Bad's conniving lawyer is back on Netflix – but can his spin-off show work?

The new show cleverly jumps between Goodman's pre- and post-Walter White life

From left: Bob Odenkirk, who plays Saul Goodman, with writers Peter Gould and Vince Gilligan on the set of ‘Better Call Saul’ (AMC)

“It’s all over,” were Saul Goodman’s final words in Breaking Bad as he bid a hasty farewell to Walter White, the chemistry teacher-turned-crime lord who had become Goodman’s major client.

An important new character is Jimmy’s older, much more successful brother, Chuck (played by Michael McKean), a law-firm partner permanently off work because of a mysterious illness, and it is Jimmy’s determination to see that Chuck is cashed out fairly that is the driver of this opening episode.

Better Call Saul was always going to sink or swim in Odenkirk’s central performance, and he certainly proves up to the task of fleshing out the two-dimensional Saul of Breaking Bad.

If that show was the story of “Mr Chips turning into Scarface” (as Gilligan described Walter White’s transformation into the monstrous Heisenberg), then Better Call Saul is going to be about the transformation of a fairly honest shopping-mall ambulance chaser into Scarface’s lawyer.

It’s still far too early to say whether the process will prove as compelling but, if anyone can do it, Gilligan can. Better call Vince.