AMC Renews 'Better Call Saul' and 'McMafia'

AMC has officially renewed a handful of their original series — including Better Call Saul and McMafia — for new seasons.

According to The Hollywood Reporter, Better Call Saul has been renewed for a fifth season and McMafia has been given the greenlight for a second season. The network also revealed that Fear the Walking Dead has been renewed for a fifth season as well.

In addition to the series renewals, AMC announced that they have ordered a new series from actor Jason Segel.

Better Call Saul creator Vince Gilligan recently spoke with the Independent about his career, and specifically opened up about Breaking Bad, the series that Better Call Saul spun-out of.

Regarding the fact that it has been a decade since the drug-dealing-drama first aired, Gilligan said it's a "super strange" feeling but still "wonderful."

"It always sounds like false modesty – I hope it doesn't, it's just the truth – but I never thought this show would succeed. At every step. I thought, 'They're not really going to make the pilot, are they? OK, well all right then. They're not really going to let me direct it, are they? Wow, OK – but they're not really going to order it to series..?' In the best possible way it's confounded expectations, and now we're talking about it 10 years on here in marvellous London," Gilligan said. "I can't get over it. I keep wanting to pinch myself."

Speaking about Better Call Saul, Gilligan clarified comments he previously made that it is "darker" than Breaking Bad, which many fans were puzzled by considered the incredibly bleak tone of the original series.

"If you think of Breaking Bad and Better Call Saul in terms of a Venn diagram, the overlap is getting bigger and bigger, and therefore Better Call Saul is getting darker in season four," Gilligan explained. "It's funny – Peter Gould and I would have long walks at the end of Breaking Bad where we'd discuss Better Call Saul and we really assumed it'd be an out-and-out comedy, we really did."

"Now it could be nothing but what it is. I'm not as actively involved but I'm watching from afar as a fan and I am really impressed with the storytelling. In season four, I mean, it's… it's… it's very much like Breaking Bad," he went on to say. "There's some great stuff coming up. As with Breaking Bad, there's humour wherever we can find it provided it's legitimate and well-earned. but those moments of earning it are now fewer and far between."

While fans will also likely have to wait until 2019 for the fifth season of Better Call Saul, they still have season four to look forward to, as it begins airing on August 6.