”Death is not the end,†lamented Nick Cave, and for the Fisher family of California, death is just a start. The Fishers are the family of undertakers of the drama series Six Feet Under, which started on e.tv last Monday.
Created by Alan Ball, who found such rich — and disturbing — material in seemingly perfect suburban life for his award-winning film American Beauty, the series has a similar feel to the film. Outwardly, Fisher and Sons is a successful undertaking company. Wife and mother Ruth (Frances Conroy) wants her husband, Nathaniel (Richard Jenkins), to stop smoking; daughter Claire (Lauren Ambrose) hangs out with her friends; son David (Michael C Hall) is ready for a day of morbid business; the other son, Nate (Peter Krause), who has left home years earlier, is on his way home for Christmas. They don’t even swear at home.
It sounds like a normal family — but behind the veneer it’s a chaotic whirl of emotions, betrayal, infidelity, drug use and secrets. And when Nathaniel Snr’s hearse is struck by a bus and he dies on impact, these people, so skilled in grief management for others, have to deal with grief themselves. The family’s dramatic reactions to their father’s death are darkly humorous — and soon the skeletons start coming out. Ruth has been having an affair; Nate learns his sister is a wild, irresponsible girl; Claire becomes suspicious about David’s sexuality after seeing her brother’s secret boyfriend, Keith (Mathew St Patrick) at their father’s wake. A further disruption comes when it is revealed that Nathaniel Snr left the business in equal parts to his two sons — David is used to running things his way, all soft-spoken and black-suited, and when Nate, who has never wanted much to do with the business, starts helping out, it’s disastrous.
All this makes for a very intriguing start to a series that has shot to instant fame overseas, scooping 23 Emmy Award nominations last year and winning six, including best directing. Its appeal lies in its ability to show the Fishers going about their lives with just a touch of the morbid and the absurb — the Addams family meets the Waltons.
It also doesn’t back away from issues that are often quietly glossed over in mainstream drama series: for example, David passionately kisses his (black) boyfriend, and in the second episode, Nate is confronted with a corpse’s erect penis.
Six Feet Under is a breath of fresh air and will doubtlessly rattle some coffins in South Africa too.
Another new drama series this month is The Shield, which starts on SABC3 on January 30. It’s a cop drama — with a difference. Benito Martinez is Captain David Aceveda, who is posted to a poverty- and crime-stricken Los Angeles neighbourhood.
But don’t expect a tale of hero cops banding together to fight crime — this is not the case, as Aceveda soon finds out. Michael Chiklis gives an excellent performance as muscled, macho Detective Vic Mackey, who, along with his team, seems to be responsible for an impressive drop in crime statistics in the area. However, Mackey is a renegade. His methods are unorthodox, violent and illegal. He doesn’t even get along with his colleagues, bullying them around and even playing infantile pranks on them, like placing dog shit in their desk drawers. He also loudly refuses to take orders from his new captain — and certainly doesn’t appreciate anyone interfering with his work, as is shockingly shown in the first episode. But he gets results — in the first episode he gets a paedophile to confess a missing girl’s location by violently beating him up while his colleagues, who had no success using conventional interrogation methods, grudgingly look the other way.
Vic and his men might have been good cops once, but they have crossed the line to anti-hero-dom and don’t seem to be able to (or don’t want to) go back. It’s hard-hitting and realistic (many camera shots look handheld, reminiscent of reality TV shows). It’s the dark side of Hill Street Blues, portrayed in a captivating way by a cast of skilled actors — Chiklis won the Emmy Award last year for outstanding lead actor in a drama series. The series was also nominated for awards for outstanding writing and directing.
Six Feet Under shows on e.tv on Mondays at 9pm. The Shield starts on SABC3 on Thursday January 30 at 9.30pm