Why the home of Better Call Saul is worth a visit

For all its critical success, Vince Gilligan’s Breaking Bad – and its superlative follow-up Better Call Saul, which returns to Netflix soon for its final hurrah – boasts a more niche achievement to its name. Like only a handful of series before it – Twin Peaks being one of them – the neo-Western epic succeeded in making stars not just of its actors, but also its cinematic location: the humble city of Albuquerque.

For years, the south western state of New Mexico – wedged between Texas and Arizona – had been luring film-makers with offers of generous tax subsidies. But it was Breaking Bad that finally cemented its place on the cultural map, and that of its largest city – thanks, in part, to Gilligan’s exceptional cinematography (those delicious shots, for example, of the To’hajiilee desert). Perhaps unsurprisingly, his work soon became a siren call for obsessive fans with a sense of adventure.