Six Feet Under is currently available to watch for free, without a subscription, on HBO Now. It’s also on HBO Go, Hulu, and Amazon Prime Video.
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Crime dramas like Law and Order are known for starting with a “body of the week,” a fresh cadaver to kick the plot into motion. Each episode of Six Feet Under also begins with a death, but what follows is a world away from those procedurals.
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Created by Alan Ball shortly after winning an Oscar for writing American Beauty, Six Feet Under is a show about the Fishers, a California family that runs a funeral home. True to form, the first episode begins as Nathaniel, the family patriarch, gets hit by a bus and meets his untimely end. We’re then introduced to the remaining Fishers as they learn what happened and start to deal with it — along with many problems of their own.
Nate jr., the 35-year-old son, starts up an exciting new relationship with a woman he met (and slept with) earlier that day. His younger brother David is set to take over the family business, but he struggles with repressed homosexuality. Claire is a morose teenager and budding artist who isn’t opposed to smoking meth when offered the chance. Finally there’s Ruth, the mother and now widow, who has a secret or two of her own.
The theme of death permeates the show — which probably comes as no surprise since it’s set in a funeral home — but it’s not all doom and gloom. It’s often very funny, with comedic, whimsical, and downright bizarre moments, some of which occur only in the characters’ heads.
Rewatching it in 2020, I have to admit that some of this comes off as cheesier than I remember from its original run. But the cheesiness is a byproduct of how earnestly it tackles these issues. Six Feet Under is about how we’re all going to die, and how that fact makes every day spent alive precious — even if it’s easy to forget. Few pieces of entertainment even try to take on such weighty themes, let alone do it with consistent levity.
So give it a binge. When you’re done, chances are you won’t look at life and death quite the same way. And you’ll especially want to stick with the show because, for my money, it has the best ending in television history.
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Source: IGN.com Binge It! Six Feet Under Is More Fun Than it Sounds… Most of the Time