‘Straight Man’: Bob Odenkirk Reunites With AMC For College Rust Belt Series

Something old, something new, and a lot of competition. The 2022 Lead Actor in a Drama Series category is going to give the Emmys headaches and should prompt those in charge to consider expanding the category from six to 10 nominees.

It was old school week on Bill Maher’s Friday Real Time. Fresh off a week away while his Adulting special ran in his regular HBO time slot, Maher celebrated his return by bringing in an old friend from the comedy circuit.

AMC has given a series order to the one-hour comedic drama, “Straight Man,” starring “Breaking Bad” alum and “Better Call Saul” star Bob Odenkirk. Here’s the show’s logline: “Straight Man is a mid-life crisis tale set at Railton College, told in the first person by William Henry Devereaux, Jr.

Joe Otterson TV ReporterWell, that was fast. AMC has formally greenlit the dramedy series “Straight Man” starring Bob Odenkirk a little over two weeks after announcing the show as in development.The show is based on the novel of the same name by Richard Russo. It is described as a mid-life crisis tale set at Railton College in the Pennsylvania Rust Belt.

AMC has handed a series order to its Bob Odenkirk-fronted adaptation of Straight Man.

The 2022 Tribeca Festival announced its lineup of world premieres of new and returning television including ESPN’s The Captain, about iconic New York Yankee Derek Jeter and Amazon Prime Video’s A League of Their Own, inspired by the 1992 film, with Abbi Jacobson.

Bob Odenkirk has a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame!

Bob Odenkirk) morphs into Saul Goodman.The first two Season 6 episodes don’t differ much from the series’ canon: they’re by turns riveting and plodding and are underscored by a cinematography template inherited by “Better Call Saul” from its predecessor, “Breaking Bad.” (It was fresh and new … back then.) Enough already with close-ups of bugs crawling in the parched desert dirt or of dripping water or unorthodox camera angles. We get it.

Bob Odenkirk is taking a moment to be grateful for the journey so far.«I'll never have a role this well-written again in my life,» the actor and comedian raved to ET's Will Marfuggi at the season 6 premiere event. «I'll have, you know, three pages that are pure comedy and two pages later, earnest, heartfelt emotion. It's just an amazing dynamic that you just don't see anywhere else, so that's OK -- I got to have it once, that's more than most people get.»The final season of the prequel series kicks off April 18 on AMC, and Odenkirk promised that there's plenty for fans to look forward to in the last 13 episodes.«It's the beginning of the end, but it's gonna tale a while,» he noted. «There's a lot of story to tell and there's a lot of cliffhanger moments coming.

Deadline has launched the streaming site for its Contenders Television, which launched the TV awards season this weekend with 48 series and almost 150 panelists converging at the Paramount Theatre in Los Angeles to discuss their buzzworthy shows in front of a full house of industry voters.

“Breaking Bad” and “Better Call Saul” fans alike have been pondering if we’d ever see Bryan Cranston’s Walter White and Aaron Paul’s Jesse Pinkman make an appearance on the prequel/spinoff series. Well, the creative team and network have finally given a concrete answer to that question.

Bob Odenkirk is opening up about the end of Better Call Saul.

Walt and Jesse are coming back.After years of fielding questions about an appearance by the “Breaking Bad” characters on the prequel series “Better Call Saul,” AMC confirmed on Saturday night that Bryan Cranston and Aaron Paul will indeed be back in some capacity in the upcoming final season of the Bob Odenkirk-fronted show. “Better Call Saul” co-creator Peter Gould first made the announcement on a Paley Fest panel on Saturday night.Further details about Cranston and Paul’s appearance were not revealed.The actors first returned to the roles of Walter White and Jesse Pinkman in the 2019 Netflix sequel film “El Camino,” which was written and directed by “Breaking Bad” creator Vince Gilligan and picked up immediately after the “Breaking Bad” finale left off, providing additional closure to Jesse Pinkman’s arc.The sixth and final season of “Better Call Saul” premieres on April 18 on AMC, but the season is being split up into two parts (Part 2 premieres in July), so it’s unknown during which part Cranston and Paul appear.Gould and Gilligan created “Better Call Saul” after the end of “Breaking Bad” as a way to expand the universe and explore the life of Saul Goodman – aka Jimmy McGill – before he crossed paths with criminal mastermind Walter White.

It’s official – Walter White and Jesse Pinkman are coming back!

Ethan Shanfeld We haven’t seen the last of Walter White and Jesse Pinkman.After dancing around the question on Thursday’s red carpet premiere, “Better Call Saul” co-creator Peter Gould has now officially confirmed that Bryan Cranston and Aaron Paul will guest star in the final season of the “Breaking Bad” spinoff.Gould announced the news Saturday at PaleyFest LA on a “Better Call Saul” panel moderated by Variety television editor Michael Schneider, though he was tight-lipped on exactly when Cranston and Paul will show up or in what capacity. But as he told Variety on Thursday, “These two worlds cross over in a way that you haven’t seen before, that’s for sure.”At Thursday’s premiere, co-creator Vince Gilligan told Variety, “It would be a damn shame if the show ended without [Cranston and Paul] appearing, would it not?” Bob Odenkirk, who plays the series’ titular crooked lawyer, also hinted at Cranston and Paul’s appearance, telling Variety that Season 6 features “some wonderful new characters… your brain is gonna explode when you see them.”Odenkirk continued, “I personally feel that the two shows — ‘Breaking Bad’ and ‘Better Call Saul’ — are entwined even more than ever in the final season.

Uber writer-producer Taylor Sheridan is excellent at keeping secrets, namely how Casey Dutton’s vision quest at the end of Season 4 of Yellowstone changes the character as he moves forward. But star Luke Grimes wouldn’t have it any other way.

Danny Strong still remembers the anger he felt while researching the opioid crisis that would lead to the creation of Dopesick. Before writing the Hulu limited series that would Michael Keaton and Kaitlyn Dever, Strong was shocked to learn how the Sackler family, the founders and owners of Purdue Pharma, caused “so much destruction to so many people and got away with it.”