Product Description

From Alan Ball, the Oscar(r) winning writer of "American Beauty", comes a series that digs where others fear to tread. When a bus kills Nathaniel Fisher, owner of the Fisher & Sons Funeral Home in Los Angeles, the tragedy casts a pall on the homecoming of his prodigal son Nate. Together with with mother Ruth, brother David and sister Claire, they must address the family business, and the many more personal matters that arise when your life is Six Feet Under.

DVD Features:
Audio Commentary
Biographies
Deleted Scenes
Episodic Previews
Episodic Recaps
Featurette
Interviews

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #3061 in DVD
• Brand: SIX FEET UNDER
• Released on: 2003-02-04
• Rating: NR (Not Rated)
• Aspect ratio: 1.33:1
• Formats: Box set, Closed-captioned, Color, Dolby, DVD, NTSC
• Original language: English, Spanish, French
• Subtitled in: Spanish
• Number of discs: 4
• Dimensions: 1.15 pounds
• Running time: 780 minutes

Features

• From Alan Ball, the Oscar(r) winning writer of "American Beauty", comes a series that digs where others fear to tread. When a bus kills Nathaniel Fisher, owner of the Fisher & Sons Funeral Home in Los Angeles, the tragedy casts a pall on the homecoming of his prodigal son Nate. Together with with mother Ruth, brother David and sister Claire, they must address the family business, and the many

Amazon.com
The Fishers are your typical dysfunctional family. Ruth (Frances Conroy) is the stern matriarch who has trouble expressing emotion and snaps at the slightest problem. Daughter Claire (Lauren Ambrose) is an underachiever who cultivates a moody, mysterious loner image in high school (she's indulging in illegal substances too). Brother David (Michael C. Hall) works in the family business, and is uptight beyond belief (he's indulging in a secret homosexual relationship too). Elder brother Nate (Peter Krause) is the black sheep, who, eschewing responsibility, fled to Seattle but got lured back. And Dad (Richard Jenkins) watches it all bemusedly. Did we mention Dad's dead? Oh, and that the Fisher family business is a funeral home? It might sound off-putting, but coming from the mind of Alan Ball, the man who strip-mined suburban life to find the mordant wit underneath in American Beauty, Six Feet Under is a trenchant, stylish spin on standard family dysfunction.

This HBO series initially aspired to fits of Twin Peaks-like whimsy, with each episode starting with a death more outlandish than the previous, but soon settled into a comfortable groove that harkened back to the most familiar of TV family dramas (in fact, it's almost a mirror image of '70s drama Family, down to the three sibling archetypes). Of course, its HBO roots allowed it ample leeway with sex, drug usage, profanity, and violence. While the writing strove to be a little too clever, the overall look and tone of the show remained solid and sometimes profound (sometimes absurd too, but usually with good reason). Krause and Hall, as initially warring brothers who come to a wary understanding, are solid anchors, but it's the women in the cast who do the most phenomenal work. Conroy infuses her almost stereotypical mom with an obstinate but ultimately accepting heart, and Ambrose's Claire is by far the show's most appealing character. And stealing scenes left and right is Rachel Griffith's Brenda, a mystery woman with an outlandish backstory who meets Nate on a plane, has sex with him at the airport, and infiltrates his life. Like Brenda herself, Six Feet Under is fascinating--and highly addictive. --Mark Englehart

Customer Reviews

Pricey...no extras, but an INCREDIBLE series!
This is a watershed series in American television. HBO, which has created some of the best written and realisticly in-your-face programming in the history of television (the Sopranos, Curb Your Enthusiasm, Oz) has re-written what is possible on the small screen with Six Feet Under.

The first season of the series deals with issues such as death, drug use, homosexuality, family alienation, mental illness, divorce, bankrupcy, co-dependency and incest. The amazing part is that it NEVER comes across like a soap opera or ABC Afterschool Special. It is very real, and moving.

Alan Ball, the extraordinary writer of the film "American Beauty" writes and directs this tour de force in television excellence. While this show is not for everyone, if you enjoyed Ball's previous work, you no doubt will love this show as much as the critics and millions of fans have. I think the Sopranos and Six Feet Under are reason enough to get HBO.

Ball creates multi-layered, complex characters for this ensemble cast, and allows them to develop throughout the season. What you see up front is not always what you get in the end.

For the price, I would have liked some extra features, like behind the scenes or a "making of" featurette, or interviews with the stars. Many of those are already available on HBO's website, I don't think it would have killed them to include a little extra for the {price}. However, that being said, you are paying {much} for 13 HOURS of entertainment. That is fairly in line with the 2 hour movie average price on DVD. And this is INFINITELY better than 99.999% of the movies that have come out in the last 10 years.

Buy it, enjoy it, and wait patiently for the next season...coming soon.

Truly unique television series
Words cannot express how odd, enthralling, and life-affirming "Six Feet Under" is. One would think that a series about a family that owns a mortuary would be morbid, but there are unexpected laughs and a true appreciation for the gift of life that one takes away from watching this first season.

One caveat: I agree with other reviewers listed here that the price for the box set is prohibitively high. A 13-episode season shouldn't warrant [this price]even with the pre-order discount offered by Amazon, the box set is too expensive.

Six Feet Under is the Best Drama Around
The Golden Globe winning drama, Six Feet Under, is finally going to get a DVD release! Anyone who has been following this series on HBO knows that Six Feet Under is one of the best dramas to come out of Hollywood in a long time. With season 2 just ending June 2 this is a perfect time to get the first season and hopefully second season released. For those who aren't familiar with Six Feet Under, the show revolves around the Fisher and Sons Funeral Home but mostly deals with the family and their friends daily struggles with life. Each episode begins with a death in which the body ends up at Fisher and Sons Funeral Home, and usually sets the pace for each episode.

As for the family, the father is deceased but his spirit has appeared in past episodes to guide or comfort some of the cast members. The mother, Ruth, works at a local flower shop and tries to hold a relationship together with its owner, Nikolai. Ruth has two sons, David and Nate. David is in a homosexual relationship with Keith who works with the police force, and Nate has problems health wise and is in a relationship with Brenda who has major problems of her own. I don't want to give too much away, so I'll let you find out all their problems when you watch the show. There is also Ruth's daughter who is an artist, but is only beginning to realize her potential to succeed. She is caught up in thinking that her life is the worst in the world, which seems to stem from growing up in a funeral home (or at least that is what she thinks). There is also Federico, who works under David and Nate in the funeral home. His job is to basically prepare the bodies and that's mostly where you see him throughout the episodes. There is also the occasional visit by Mitsy who is determined to either buy out Fisher and Sons or crush David and Nate. She would probably prefer to do both, though.

That doesn't even begin to explain the best drama series around. For those who think that this is just some show about death, you're wrong. Six Feet Under is so much more and I can't wait for season 3 to begin. There is much going on throughout this series with lawsuits, love triangles, drug abuse, money scandals, and the occasional death:) that it's almost impossible not to watch once you have started. Also, a lot of people are probably able to relate to many of the topics covered in this show. This DVD will make a great addition to your collection whether you are following the series now, or buying this to see it for the first time. You won't be disappointed!!!