Six Feet Under (2001 – 2005)
Thirteen years ago tomorrow, I met my ex-wife for the first time, and it was on her recommendation that I started watching Six Feet Under. She was already a couple of seasons deep at that time, but it took me almost a full decade to get around to watching it… and I’m glad I did, because Six Feet Under is one of the best ongoing dramas produced this side of the Y2K bug.
A synopsis doesn’t really do Six Feet Under justice. It’s essentially an adult-themed drama about the lives of a family-run funeral parlour… with the dead bodies as background. Of course, death is not just literal here, but also used as a metaphorical device throughout the episodes. The series is not nearly as dark as you may think, given the grim subject matter, and it always maintains it’s very bleak sense of humour. The performances all round are great – especially Peter Krause and Michael C Hall – and the show is loaded with sex to counterbalance the death.
Six Feet Under can also lay claim to perhaps one of the greatest epilogues of any dramatic show of all time. Just watch it and try to tell me otherwise.
I would suggest that Scrooged is an underrated Christmas movie, as it’s certainly not one that gets talked about along with other bona fide classics of the season. All right, maybe it shouldn’t be in that conversation anyway, but it is one of my favourites.
Clive Barker has probably suffered professionally because unfortunately he was writing at the same time as that other British horror guru, James Herbert… although I’m pretty sure he’s managed to get by, so I don’t know how much hardship he’s actually gone through. Having said that, Barker generally leans far more heavily towards the fantasy end of the spectrum so they perhaps split fewer fans than I think.
It’s often wrongly perceived as a show for women, but that’s both narrow-minded and inaccurate. If a joke makes me laugh it doesn’t really matter who its target demographic is, and Sex and the City made me laugh a lot.
I haven’t asked her lately, but there’s a fair chance that National Lampoon’s Christmas Vacation is my sister’s favourite Christmas movie. It’s not bad, and it’s fine to stick on in the background while you’re hanging your decorations or dressing your tree, but compared to some other seasonal comedies, it’s a little stale and uninspired.
I have read several novels by Michael Crichton – from his biggest successes to some of his lesser known work – and he made a career out of following a tried and tested formula when it comes to the layout of the science in his books. It’s a Michael Crichton trademark, and it all started with The Andromeda Strain, the first novel published under his own name.
A lot of things I watched as a child would have slipped through the net if we consumed television then the way we do now. It’s Garry Shandling’s Show was one of those things.
Looking at Tom Hanks’ output over the last twenty years or so, a new viewer to his work would be forgiven for thinking he was always middle of the road. It’s difficult to appreciate that he started his career playing in broad comedies like The Money Pit. In fact, he was one of Hollywood’s biggest comedy stars of the eighties. And he was damn good at it too.
-- Purveyor of Imagination -- 