I won't go into the plot at this point (you can read about that elsewhere) except to say 'expect the unexpected' with Six Feet Under - which is why it is so interesting. The end music is very beautiful too...yes, this disc is absolutely unmissable, even if you didn't see much of the middle of this series. A real wow!

The show that just gets better and better!
Review date: 2006-02-17 Rating: 10 out of 10

Along with The Sopranos- this is, at least to my mind, the greatest of all tv shows. The acting, writing and direction are absolutely briiliant. This is top notch and has developed since the first two seasons into something that can still shock and surprise but finds new and interesting ways to keep you watching. With the arrival of Arthur in this season- a brilliantly absurd chracter and the strange goings on in the Fisher home this is just as good as what has preceeded it. Then there is the episode where David and Keith play paintball (all slow A-Team action and superb over the top music) how can anyone say that this show was on the wane at this point? Compare it to the likes of Lost (all surface) and Desperate Houswives (Again- all surface) and this show leaves them lying in the dirt. If you have never seen Six Feet Under then i suggest you watch American Beauty first (written by this shows creator) as that will set the template for what you will see here.

decline and falter
Review date: 2005-08-13 Rating: 6 out of 10

The first two series of this show are probably the best television I've seen in the last decade. It's the closest I think television has ever come to the complexity and subtlety of written fiction.

That's what makes this third season so disappointing. It's probably better than 90% of the relationship dramas out there, well - written, well - acted for the most part, and cleverly thought out. Nor is the problem that it's lost its focus. If anything, this is where the main flaw lies. This time around it focuses entirely on the relationships and in a peculiarly psychoanalytical style. The effect is that often every character appears to be talking like a therapist, or visiting them. I don't deny that this is a big part of american culture, but it makes for pretty flat drama. As a result, the series seems to coast along and it relies on gripping the audience by throwing in the biggies [someone gets an abortion, someone else dies, someone is caught cheating], which seem more like plot devices than organic to the story line. Equally, the series has been "sexed up", but in a bizarre way, so that most of the sex that takes place in the show seems stuck in the same framework of therapy and "working out who we are to each other" that dominates the show. Certain characters, like Clare's art teacher, never really develop other than as sexual signposts in this regard. Even the deaths at the begining of the show, previously so seamlessly interweaved into the plots, feel more contrived, random, perverse, like the deaths in "dead like me".

Neither of the first two series would have been this lazy. I haven't seen the fourth series yet, so maybe they can turn it around. If not, then there's no shame, because the first two series will stand up in ten, twenty years time, and how many American or UK drama series can you really say that about?

Nothing Will Be the Same Again
Review date: 2005-04-17 Rating: 10 out of 10

After Season One and Two, season three takes a decidedly different turn. While Season One was about discovering identity, season two was about friends, family and lovers. Season 3 is about relationships, and change.

This isn't the same show as the first two seasons. Superfially character roles have changed largely and the people you see are mostly new. There's no Parker here, Brenda doesn't appear until the 5th episode, Nikolai's non-existent, as is assistant Robbie.

On a deeper level the show is darker, more subdued, more brooding. It is a tribute to the show's actors that if they didn't have the gravitas that they do the show would seem slow, but in actual fact it seems breathtaking up until the eventual climax of the last four actors which is just breathtaking television in every meaning of the phrase.

Six Feet Under, fantastic television.

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