WOLVES AND SHEEP (BETTER CALL SAUL, SEASON 6 - FIRST HALF)

It's a measure of just how much of a cult show 'Better Call Saul' has become that it can afford to split its final season in two.

Season Six, Part One of 'Better Call Saul' finds Bob Odenkirk's Jimmy McGill still waging war with Patrick Fabian's corporate lawyer Howard Hamlin.

Rhea Seehorn's talented attorney and Jimmy's wife, Kim Wexler remains a willing accomplice.

Jonathan Banks' perpetually grumpy, former Philadelphia police officer Mike Ehrmantraut is still tidying up messes for Giancarlo Esposito's fast food chain owner and drugs kingpin, Gustavo Fring.

But somehow in this split final season of 'Better Call Saul,' the stakes for them all just get higher and higher.

(SPOILER ALERT!!)

After betraying Tony Dalton's Lalo Salamanca in a failed assassination bid by Fring's gang in season five, Michael Mando's Nacho Varga is laying low at the start of Season Six.

Lalo has gone to ground too, with the Cartel believing he was killed during the assassination attempt.

He has actually fled to Germany to investigate what Gus Fring is building at a New Mexico laundry and track down the crew who were involved.

With Mark Margolis' Hector Salamanca eager for Nacho to be caught and tortured, Fring knows he has a major problem on his hands with the Cartel weighing in behind his rival's demands.

Spiriting Nacho away to a motel with Mike his only line of contact, Fring has to decide whether to sacrifice him or not.

Jimmy, meanwhile, is focusing his efforts on two fronts.

As Kim impresses her peers with her pro bono work, Jimmy is building a booming legal business under the pseudonym Saul Goodman and is seeing felons queue around the block to engage his services.

You suspect, though, his and Kim's real passion is tormenting his brother's former legal partner, Howard Hamlin.

During Season Six Part One, the couple devise an elaborate series of mind games aimed at destroying his reputation.

And they want Howard's reputation to be tarnished in the eyes of Ed Begley Jr's Clifford Main.

And so they plant cocaine in his locker at a country club, so it can fall out after playing a round of golf with Clifford.

They also stage manage an episode in a car involving a screaming, crack addicted prostitute while Kim is having a career chat with Clifford over lunch.

However they save their most elaborate con for the undermining of the Sandpiper lawsuit which Howard took over from Jimmy.

While undoubtedly cruel, a lot of the undermining of Howard would normally be comic material.

However unlike previous seasons, Season Six's misdeeds by Jimmy and Kim feel really excessive and have much graver consequences than before.

In its previous five seasons, Vince Gilligan, Peter Gould and their writing team have crafted some of the best drama on TV - treading a very delicate line between black comedy and morally challenging drama.

Part One of Season Six of 'Better Call Saul' lives up to its billing - albeit at a more deliberate pace.

Over the course of seven episodes, various plot elements slowly ferment before delivering one hell of a kick in a jaw dropping mid season finale.

Oddly reminiscent at times of 'The Sting,' the show revels in Jimmy and Kim's mischief.

But it also retains its unease as Mike wades through the stormy waters of unsavoury Cartel characters like Fring and the Salamancas.

Writers Peter Gould, Thomas Schnauz, Ariel Levine, Gordon Smith, Ann Cherkis and Alison Tatlock deliver some stunning moments including a thrilling motel shootout involving Nacho and an equally dramatic escape.

As ever, the show thrives on the back of Odenkirk's roguish charm as Jimmy who remains a loveable shyster.

Yet it is Seehorn who intrigues more, as Kim spurns opportunities that a lawyer of her talent should be grabbing to engage in illegal and vindictive activities.

Banks and Esposito remain as watchable as ever - providing much of the show's grit.

Dalton, Margolis and Mando also bring a lot to the table, while Begley Jr amuses as the stuffy doyenne of the local legal community.

However it is Fabian who arguably steals the first half of Season Six, as Howard is cruelly bated throughout the show.

Struggling in a stultifying marriage, it is hard not to feel sympathy for him as he struggles to understand the depth of Jimmy's hatred.

Part One of Season Six is more of a slow burn than previous series of 'Better Call Saul'.

But with Seehorn, Esposito, Vince Gilligan, Michael Morris, Gordon Smith, Melissa Bernstein and Thomas Schnauz on directorial duties, you are under no illusion that the foundations are being laid for the second half of season six.

But this being 'Better Call Saul,' you realise they have packed gelignite in those foundations.

Just sit back in July and August and watch them light the match. It's going to be explosive.

(Season Six, Part One of 'Better Call Saul' was broadcast on AMC in the United States from April 18-May 23, 2022 and was made available for streaming on Netflix in the UK and Ireland)