25 Years Later, HBO’s 5-Part Psychological Drama Is Still One of TV’s All-Time Greats

HBO developed its reputation for television excellence by making gritty, mature shows that included the sort of graphic content that would never be permitted on a network program. While the best shows in HBO history offered more than just shock value, the transgressive nature of the material suggested that it was “dangerous” in a way that was enticing to audiences. Compared to its contemporaries, Six Feet Under was a fairly traditional family drama that didn’t necessarily require a prestige distributor. However, Six Feet Under distinguished itself as a probing exploration of life, relationships, and death that was as artful as it was authentic. The series managed to turn its dark subject matter into a poignant, occasionally funny encapsulation of the totality of human existence, and it still holds up just as well 25 years later.

‘Six Feet Under’ Strikes the Perfect Tone Between Workplace and Family Drama

Six Feet Under is the story of the Fisher family, who own and operate a funeral home. After the family patriarch Nathaniel Sr. (Richard Jenkins) dies, control of the business is passed along to his sons David (Michael C. Hall) and Nate (Peter Krause), who are also tasked with caring for their mother Ruth (Frances Conroy) as their sister Claire (Lauren Ambrose) prepares to graduate from high school. Six Feet Under is both a workplace drama and a family story, exploring how one business interacts with the partners, loved ones, and acquaintances of the recently deceased. While Six Feet Under never chose sentimentality when it could provide a more honest outlook, it did celebrate the profundity of life’s most minor moments in a way that most television shows wouldn’t think to portray.

The framing device of Six Feet Under is quite clever, as each episode opens by showing how someone died before they were prepared by the Fishers, who are also tasked with planning the funeral. These introductions can be darkly funny, tragic, or unexpected, but they play an important role in showing how precious life is and how quickly it can be taken for granted. What distinguishes the Fisher family’s practices from other funerary businesses is that they make efforts to understand someone’s last wishes and honor their life, despite not always being prepared to support the bereaved. Although it seems like the characters might be hardened by their experiences, the Fishers only become more involved with the entire community through their business. By offering insights into people who have no control over how they will be remembered, Six Feet Under explores the realistic ways grief can emerge and how it doesn’t always occur in the way that one might expect.

The commentary on death is fascinating because Six Feet Under opened itself up to conversations about the meaning of life and offered interesting perspectives on faith, forgiveness, and human frailty. However, the HBO series has endured as a great drama because of its well-defined characters, each of whom evolves immensely over the course of five seasons. Nate begins the story as a somewhat reckless, uninvolved participant in the family who ends up having one of the most complicated arcs as he searches for what he wants in life. David offers the most grounded perspective because he is the closest thing to his father’s heir apparent, but Six Feet Under was also trailblazing in its nonjudgmental depiction of a gay character, as well as the difficulties he faced coming out. Claire’s journey is perhaps the most fascinating because she has an opportunity to grow up over the course of the show and often has a perspective that grounds her brothers; although both Nate and David are essentially in the shadow of their father, Claire is willing to diverge from the family path, often resulting in intense standoffs with their mother.

‘Six Feet Under’ Retains Its Quality Throughout All Five Seasons

Six Feet Under still feels like a high-quality HBO show today because the series was artful with its visual inventiveness and found a way to explore subconscious desires and anxieties in a way that hadn’t been seen before. Dreams rarely feel surreal when they are occurring, and Six Feet Under was able to walk in its characters’ shoes as they had their reality reconstructed in response to trauma. Although the show never ascribed to a single religion, spiritual undertones are present throughout, particularly in the way that characters communicate with loved ones who have departed. One of the best framing devices that Six Feet Under developed was bringing back Jenkins as a ghostly version of Nathaniel Sr., who looms so large in his children’s memory that they are able to visualize him.

Six Feet Under is the rare show that retained a consistent level of quality throughout without ever having a “jump the shark” moment; even the fourth-season episode where David is kidnapped, which could have felt completely ridiculous, is well-handled because of its stunning real-time execution. The greatest legacy of Six Feet Under is that it has what may be the best series finale of all time in “Everybody’s Waiting,” which wraps up every character’s fate with just the right amount of gravity and ambiguity. Although it is an emotionally involving show that is often quite harrowing, Six Feet Under remains a masterpiece that demonstrates how empathetic great television can be.