Six Feet Under, the Second Season

To fill the Sunday night void following the third season of The Sopranos, HBO launched Six Feet Under, created by the Academy-Award winning writer of American Beauty, Alan Ball. That Ball boy happens also to be a recent winner of the Golden Globe for best drama series, thanks to this new gig. The show follows the darkly comic trials of two brothers who take over their father’s funeral home business after a municipal bus broadsides Dad’s new hearse. Set to the twinkling theme composed by the same guy who scored Beauty (Thomas Newman), each episode opens with a death-of-the-week upon which the story is built. Frances Conroy plays the frazzled matriarch to tortured soul David (Michael C. Hall), prodigal son Nate (Minneapolis native Peter Krause) and troubled teen Claire (Lauren Ambrose). Their storylines get complicated with a rich supporting cast that includes Oscar-nominated Aussie Rachel Griffiths as Nate’s girlfriend, Jeremy Sisto as her psycho brother, Freddy Rodriguez as the under-appreciated mortician Rico, and the occasional cameo by dead dad—Nathaniel Fisher—the second ghost dad to appear in this edition of the Broken Clock, do we have a trend going here? Deadly funny!