Six Of The Best (Six Feet Under)

Member Name: stoffy

Product:	Six Feet Under
Date:	19/02/03 (456 review reads)
Rating:

Advantages: superbly written, acted impeccably

Disadvantages: none

2002 was a pretty good year for American television, with accolades being given left, right and centre for shows such as 'The West Wing' and '24'. However, the best TV show to come out of the States last year was undoubtedly 'Six Feet Under', which follows the trials and tribulations of the Fisher family as they try to run their independent funeral home.

The first series of the show introduced us to the Californian clan with the death of the father of the house, Nathanial Fisher Snr through a bizarre road accident. We are then taken on a roller-coaster ride through their complicated lives as they try to keep their father's business going in the face of adversity.

The programme manages to mix subtle comedy with high emotion, and is fantastically written, allowing all of the individual characters to thoroughly develop within the stories. It was written by Alan Ball, who is best known for the fantastic Oscar winning 'American Beauty', and much of the visual and structural content of that film is seen here too.

Here is a rundown of the main characters...

Ruth Fisher (Frances Conroy)

Ruth is the mother of the family. Disciplined, religious and quirky, she struggles initially to deal with the death of her husband. She feels particularly guilty in the aftermath due to having had a long affair with another man, Hiram, prior to Nathanial Snr's car accident. As the first series develops, we see her become more confident in herself, and for her husband's death to act as the catalyst for improving her life.

She struggles to make a decision about her relationship with Hiram about which she still feels guilty, and this is further complicated by her new infatuation with the Russian flower seller Nikolai for whom she works for.

David Fisher (Michael C. Hall)

David is the middle child of the Fisher clan, and has always worked at the funeral home. Dour, ser
ious and unhappy, he is gay (closeted) and finds it difficult to form relationships with anyone inside or outside his family. He is particularly distressed when his father's will leaves the business in joint ownership with himself and older brother Nate, having expected sole ownership to be his.

His relationship with the black policeman Keith is tempestuous, and after being dumped for neglecting Keith in favour of his work and other commitments, David starts experimenting with drugs and male escorts. However, in public he is seen as a deeply religious man, and is a Canon at the local church.

Nate Fisher (Peter Krause)

Nate is the wayward child. Leaving home in his late teens, he left Los Angeles to live and work in Seattle. Having returned home, he is shocked to learn that he has been left half of the family business in his father's will. After some soul-searching, he decides to take on the role, giving the business a human side to contrast with David's more professional and unemotional manner.

He meets Brenda on the way home to LA for a vacation, and soon develops an intense relationship with her, which shapes much of his life. It is whilst being 'intimate' with Brenda in an airport closet that he finds out about his father's passing...

Claire Fisher (Lauren Ambrose)

Claire is the youngest of the Fisher clan. Like Nate, she didn't find out the bad news about her father in the best manner - she was high on crack at the time. A bit of a rebel, she finds it hard to fit in at school. She has a brief fling with bad-boy Gabe, although this soon ends in tears when he tells secrets about her to his friends, resulting in Claire being the laughing stock of the school. However, it's Claire who gets the last laugh in a rather gruesome way...

Unlike most TV teenage characters, Claire is three-dimensional. Vulnerable as well as stroppy, you feel genuine sympathy with her es
pecially in her struggle to come to terms with her feelings for Gabe, who had wronged her so badly.

Brenda (Rachel Griffiths)

Brenda is the impulsive, intelligent and unusual love of Nate's life. After their initial meeting, it becomes clear that she is a complex woman with many issues. It is gradually established that her psychologist parents put her through a series of tests whilst she was younger, and she feels damaged by the whole of her childhood.

She has a close (and very peculiar) relationship with her brother, Billy, who has a mental illness. As her relationship with Nate grows stronger, Billy becomes more resentful and stalks the couple, causing Brenda to make some difficult decisions.

Rico (Freddy Rodriguez)

Rico is the undervalued restorative artist who has the delightful job of trying to make injured corpses look as they did when the person was alive. An essential part of the Fisher business, he briefly moves over to a rival funeral home Kroehner Service Corporation after being told that he would not be made a partner in the firm. However, he soon returns from the Fishers' rivals (who continually try to put them out of business) with some shocking news...


At the start of every programme, we witness the death of someone that acts as the centre-point for each episode. Some of these are funny (the man sliced by the bread mixer springing to mind), whilst others are tragic (Gabe's 6 year old brother shooting himself). Although on the surface the centrepiece of 'Six Feet Under' appears to be death and grief, it is in fact the twists and turns of each character's very different personal lives that makes the programme what it is.

Series two continued where the first one left off, with the same quality storylines and even more development of the characters. Only shown in the UK so far on E4, it sees Ruth go on a journey of self-exploration as well as exploring he
r relationship with Nikolai. Nate and Brenda become even more intense and gives rise to some of the best scenes seen in either series, whilst David and Keith also embark on a rollercoaster ride of emotions. It's also the series where we see Claire grow up, although she too has a number of personal traumas.

Perhaps not as fast paced as series one, it still manages to maintain the high quality script, whilst the acting is top-notch as ever.

Every episode is beautifully shot, and with each episode layering the lives of those shown within it, it is one of the finest pieces of television to come out of America in a long time, deserving each of the accolades it has received so far. For those who haven't seen the second series, you are in for a treat. For those who have, I'm sure you'll agree that the third series can't come soon enough!

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