Gripping Netflix show with 99% on Rotten Tomatoes returns for final season this month

Better Call Saul Netflix TV show S6 promotional image featuring cast of characters standing on grass with blue sky overhead

(Image credit: Netflix)

published 6 April 2022

I'm typing this with a mix of excitement and sadness: the best drama show on any streaming service, Better Call Saul, begins its sixth and final season on Netflix later this month. If you haven't already seen it I'm jealous, because you have 50 episodes of absolute TV heaven to discover before the final series drops.

If you don't believe me that Better Call Saul is the best drama on any streaming service, just check out the Rotten Tomatoes ratings. Season 1: 97%. Season 2: 97%. Season 3: 98%. Season 4: 99%. Season 5: 99%. And the early word on Season 6 is that it maintains the exceptional quality. I can't wait to see it but I'll be sad to see it end in April 2022 because this is my absolute favourite show ever.

So what's so great about it? I'm glad you asked.

Why Better Call Saul is brilliant

Although it's a spin-off from the legendary Breaking Bad, Better Call Saul is a superb programme in its own right. There's some overlap with the BB world – you'll see some familiar faces as the show progresses – but it has its own story to tell and a whole new cast of characters for you to fall in love with and to fear.

Better Call Saul is the story of how a straight-laced lawyer becomes hopelessly corrupt and compromised, and it's an exceptional character study – not just of Saul, but of the people around him too. Rhea Seehorn as Saul's soulmate Kim is a revelation, and Jonathan Banks as sad pit bull / mentor / terrifying tough guy Mike Ehrmantraut is one of the great characters in modern TV. This is a show where every character gets to breathe, and while that means it can be a little slow to get its pieces in motion the pay-off is well worth the wait. And the foreshadowing adds a whole new element of tension: we know things are going to go very wrong towards the end. We just don't know how, or why.

Why do I like it so much? Because it has everything. It's incredibly tense, sometimes so much so that I watch from behind my fingers. It's often incredibly funny. And it has a really huge heart.

Better Call Saul is better than Breaking Bad, better than The Wire, better than Narcos and Gomorrah and The Shield and Line of Duty. Binge it this month. You can thank me later.

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Writer, musician and broadcaster Carrie Marshall has been covering technology since 1998 and is particularly interested in how tech can help us live our best lives. Her CV is a who’s who of magazines, newspapers, websites and radio programmes ranging from T3, Techradar and MacFormat to the BBC, Sunday Post and People’s Friend. Carrie has written more than a dozen books, ghost-wrote two more and co-wrote seven more books and a Radio 2 documentary series; her memoir, Carrie Kills A Man, was shortlisted for the British Book Awards. When she’s not scribbling, Carrie is the singer in Glaswegian rock band Unquiet Mind (unquietmindmusic).