When it comes to addict-TV we want a mash-up, not a repeat

http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2013/sep/22/tv-mash-up-breaking-bad-walking-dead

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Breaking Bad is incontestably the most talked-about TV show of 2013. The show is superbly written, beautifully acted, and has the added "in crowd" cachet of premiering its final season on subscription service Netflix. It was already immensely addictive and now it's a little harder to come by. It's almost like … I don't know … methamphetamine?

But from the opening moments of the first series, in which we see schoolteacher Walter White sucked into the world of crystal meth, the end of the journey was in sight. In terms of pure realism it's a miracle he made it to the end of the second series. Where will Breaking Bad junkies go when it's all over? Tapering off with The Great British Bake Off doesn't seem like a realistic option.

Luckily AMC, the US network behind Breaking Bad, has commissioned Walter and Jesse's creators – Vince Gilligan and Peter Gould – to write a new spin-off show called Better Call Saul. It focuses on amoral – well, more-amoral-than-average – lawyer Saul Goodman.

The series will begin, according to the press release, with a "one-hour prequel that will focus on the evolution of the popular Saul Goodman character before he ever became Walter White's lawyer". I find Saul one of the funnier elements of the Breaking Bad recipe. I hope comedy's at the fore of Better Call Saul.

I like Breaking Bad. I'm pleased at the prospect of more stories from the same world. I also rather like The Walking Dead, another AMC show set in the aftermath of one of those zombie apocalypses we hear so much about. There are more stories to come from that world too.

Like its parent, the new (as yet untitled) Walking Dead show will follow the fortunes of a ragtag band of survivors trying to cope in a post-apocalyptic zombie nightmare but – crucially – they'll be a different ragtag band of survivors than the ones we know and love. A band not led by Egg from This Life.

It's hard to see what the writers will find to distinguish this new The Walking Dead series from its parent. It couldn't be substantially grimmer or more visceral than the original show. Perhaps they'll lighten it up. There's definitely a shortage of zombie-themed musical comedies on TV right now.

Taking a step further down the genre-TV food chain, superhero show Arrow is spawning a spin-off too. Arrow takes the bearded, left-leaning DC Comics archery expert Green Arrow and reinvents him as a hip metrosexual nightclub owner. The spin-off, due this year, will feature Green Arrow's fast-moving Justice League colleague The Flash. There was a Flash show once before, in that purple patch of superheroism that followed the success of the Tim Burton Batman films. It was perfectly fine. Hardly anybody watched it. Perhaps this Flash will be different. He'll definitely have more defined abs.

Spin-offs are by no means a new idea. Successful TV shows, especially sitcoms, have been budding new properties since the days when people still knew what The Adventures of Ozzie and Harriet was about. Even BBC2's chin-stroking arts roundtable The Late Show reproduced by binary fission, spawning the more populist and much longer-lived Jools Holland Later series.

But there's clearly something in the air at the moment. A little flurry of mitosis in the TV schedules. Networks, at least in the US, are determined to give us more of what we already like. They should proceed with caution though. There are two Joeys to every Frasier.

If I could make a constructive suggestion, rather than just carping from the sidelines, it would be this. Instead of making new comedies from existing comedies, or new dramas from the ones we already have, programme-makers should take a leaf out of hip-hop's book.

Mashing up two shows is more creative than just extending one. Bring back a beloved deceased character from Breaking Bad (mentioning no names) and send them shambling across New Mexico in a search for human flesh. Or just commission a drug-themed cookery show featuring Mary Berry and Paul Hollywood cooking up meth in a nice tent in the home counties.

Because yes, we do want more of the stuff we already like. But we crave novelty too. And we're always looking for a bigger, more exhilarating rush than last time.

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