Six Feet Under
When death is your business, what is your life? Laced with irony and dark situational humor, the show approaches the subject of death through the eyes of the Fisher family, who owns and operates a funeral home in Los Angeles.
TV Series 2001 – 2005
5 Seasons – 63 Episodes
On one level, the show is a conventional family drama, dealing with such issues as interpersonal relationships, sex, masculine homosexuality, dysfunction, infidelity, personal growth, and religion. At the same time, it is distinguished by its focus on the topic of death, which it explores on personal, religious, and philosophical levels. Most episodes begin with a death, the cause of which ranges from heart attack to murder to accidental death or sudden infant death syndrome. That death usually sets the thematic tone for each episode, allowing the characters to reflect on their current fortunes and misfortunes in a way that is illuminated by the death and its aftermath.
A recurring plot device consists of a character having an imaginary conversation with the deceased; for example, Nate, David, and Federico sometimes “converse” with the deceased at the beginning of the episode, while the corpse is being embalmed, or during funeral planning or the funeral itself. Sometimes, the characters converse with other deceased characters, most notably Nathaniel Fisher Sr. The show’s creator Alan Ball said this represents the living characters’ internal dialogues expressed in the form of external conversations.
