Last rites: Six Feet Under comes to a close

Rachel Griffiths has been crying. The Aussie actress is about to say goodbye to someone she has grown very close to in five years - her Six Feet Under character, Brenda.

After five seasons of deaths, funerals and grave confessions, the award-winning show is about to meet its maker, with the final series starting on TV One tonight. Yet given a choice, Griffiths says she wouldn't sign on for another five.

"It's a long time to just be in one character," she says. "It's a long time to do a show that is so intense. Let's go out with a bang. You want to be remembered for your best work, and not have people go, 'Oh, are you still making that show? I stopped watching it."'

Producer Alan Poul is wary Six Feet Under could become outlandish if it passes its use-by date. Rather than risk burn-out like Sex & the City or The Sopranos, Poul and creator Allan Ball felt it was time to pull the plug, a decision backed by its cable network HBO.

But when Six Feet Under goes, it will have a long mourning period. Who won't miss the dysfunctional Fisher family, who, when they're not running their Pasadena funeral business, are dealing with relationships, drugs, abortion, abduction, sexuality, homophobia, conspiracy, self-loathing - and occasionally, people speaking to them from the grave?

"Triumphantly melodramatic," gushed one scribe. "No TV drama has ever revealed the suffocating side of marriage so absorbingly," raved another.

Six Feet Under has been consistently praised for its realistic and fair portrayal of gay couple David (Michael C. Hall) and Keith (Mathew St. Patrick). The show has also touched on coming out issues, sexual confusion and hate crimes.

The funeral industry has also expressed its appreciation for the show's unique vantage point.

"In the past, like in the cartoons, you see these ghoulish, pale-faced characters," says Freddy Rodriguez, who plays funeral partner, Federico Diaz. "We're always in the basement dealing with bodies. That's always been people's perception of funeral directors and embalmers. And I think our show portrayed them as regular people."

Those who haven't watched since the first series might be surprised to learn that Claire, (Lauren Ambrose) introduced as a snotty-nosed teen smoking crystal meth with her boyfriend, is now a young adult on the verge of a successful career in fine arts.

Federico, once a happy-go-lucky apprentice in the embalming room, is a stressed partner of the company dealing with an increasingly unstable marriage. Unlike many TV dramas, the characters have grown up in real time, providing many creative arcs for the actors to work with.

Ask them what they'll miss the most, and, aside from the camaraderie, it's the writing.

Says Ambrose, "Every week I get a manila folder in my trailer that could have something that is terrifying to me."

Before Six Feet Under, there were no guarantees viewers would choose to be entertained by death, somewhat of a taboo.

"Well there's a lot more corpses on TV," Poul agrees.

"Rather than opting for the very flat, earnest sincerity that was the main storytelling tone of most American TV drama before us, that sense of irony has now seeped into the mainstream. Look at a show like Desperate Housewives. Mark Cherry, the creator, has talked about being influenced by American Beauty and Six Feet Under, because it brings a sense of irony to its storytelling that I think was probably not possible on network primetime before our show."

That sense of irony has allowed the show's writers to push the boundaries of darkness.

In one episode, David picked up a hitch-hiker, flirted with him, and was consequently drugged, terrorised with a gun and left bruised and abandoned on the roadside.

Justina Machado, who plays Vanessa Diaz, says she went through a period of depression in the third series; her onscreen husband Freddy Rodriguez can't forget a scene where he had to put a skull back together after it had been smashed in with a cherry picker. "I walked on set seeing it, man, and the face was smashed in, goop was coming out of her eye socket. I'd never seen that. I was thinking, 'Oh man, I know it's not real but ...

"How could you sit there all day and ball your eyes out and go there emotionally and not take some of that home with you? It's made me more appreciative of my life and the people around me."

He's even come to terms with the show's demise.

"We never thought of the show as open-ended," says Poul.

"We always thought that this is a novel, and we were never quite sure exactly how long it was going to be, but that it would be of a finite length and have a beginning, middle and an ending."

May it rest in peace.