VIDEO OF THE WEEK
Six Feet Under (2001)
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Oscar-winning American Beauty screenwriter Alan Ball didn't just resurrect the soap-opera genre, he embalmed it. Ball's ground-breaking, Emmy-winning HBO series centers on the Fishers, an eccentric, dysfunctional clan trying to maintain their mom-and-pop funeral home business in the wake of the death of the family patriarch. The series pilot, included here among the original 13 episodes, is quite simply one of the finest hours of television ever. There's really nothing to criticize here: The cast is superb, the writing is tight, the theme song and title sequence are worth watching with every episode, and the shows' moods waver between melancholy, hilarity and, occasionally, utter devastation. Ball's narration over the first and last episodes offers humorous insight into the show's creation while adding a layer of depth to what already seems like a fathomless show. The four-disc set includes creator commentary; featurettes on the title sequence and the making-of the show; deleted scene; music tracks; series index; widescreen format.