Still, despite entering into the eternal TV canon together, Saul Goodman and Bob Odenkirk were never ideal fits for each other.
“Saul is hard to play because he’s quite different from me,” Odenkirk tells Den of Geek. “This guy was a little closer. I felt like I related to him more.”
“This guy” is the aforementioned William Henry “Hank” Devereaux Jr. in Russo’s Straight Man, now the TV series Lucky Hank for AMC. During Better Call Saul‘s final season, Odenkirk finally read the pilot script for Lucky Hank, penned by fellow TV luminaries Paul Lieberstein (The Office) and Aaron Zelman (Law & Order), and identified with the fictional literary professor’s use of humor to deal with the mediocrity all around him. He also enjoyed the down-to-Earth nature of this story about simple ennui and office politics in the world of academia.
“It’s not a genre piece at all. There’s no guns, there’s no drugs, there’s no zombies, there’s no dystopian anything. There’s humor. It’s also a funny show. I think Lucky Hank is like 51% comedy and 49% drama.”
With a TV producing superteam in place to go along with its lead, Lucky Hank made its premiere on Sunday, March 19 on AMC – a mere seven months after the Better Call Saul series finale for Odenkirk. Though the process from script to screen was quick and relatively smooth, Richard Russo’s novel did require one alteration on its way to becoming Lucky Hank: a name change.
As is also the case in the show, in Russo’s novel, Hank’s internal monologue frequently comments upon events and people that he perceives to be ridiculous. It’s in this way that Hank acts as a “straight man” in the context of an old comedy duo.