Hands up if you loved Breaking Bad and Better Call Saul. Us too. So we’re absolutely stoked by the news that Vince Gilligan, creator of both shows, has a new series in production for Apple TV Plus. It’s a sci-fi series starring Rhea Seehorn, who was so brilliant in Saul, and it’ll begin filming in New Mexico later this year.
Gilligan revealed some details about the new show in a fascinating interview with Variety in which he explains why there won’t be a “Heisenberg Jr” spin-off series, how he handles writing himself into a corner and how the shows’ characters live on in his head. But it’s the new series that has got us particularly excited.
What show is Vince Gilligan making now?
“I wouldn’t call this heavy science fiction,” Gilligan says. “I would call it mild science fiction. But it does have a sci-fi element to it, at its core… it’s going to be fun and different”. Although the show is set in Albuquerque, where Better Call Saul was largely filmed, it’s a very different Albuquerque – quite literally. “The world changes very abruptly in the first episode,” Gilligan explains. “It’s the modern world – the world we live in – but it changes very abruptly. And the consequences that that reaps hopefully provide drama for many, many episodes after that.”
Apple has commissioned two series and clearly there’s potential for more, with it likely to be among our best Apple TV Plus shows list soon. Gilligan is adamant that there’s no overlap between the worlds of Better Call Saul and the new show – Seehorn “is playing a character who is not Kim Wexler,” he says – but he’s keeping most of the details secret for the time being.
I don’t know about you but I’m sold already: we know that the combination of Seehorn and Gilligan is a superb one, and that’s enough to put this unnamed show right at the top of my watch list. And it’s worth pointing out that Gilligan isn’t new to “mild” sci-fi, so this isn’t him moving into a genre he doesn’t know: before Breaking Bad he worked on The X-Files, for which he shared three Golden Globe Awards, and its spin-off series The Lone Gunmen.
