Time to take a fresh look at grave matters

By FRANCES GRANT

Six Feet Under returned last week (TV One, 9.30pm) in reassuringly morbid form, the new season kicking off, as the first began, with a death in the family and internal tensions running high. In this drama, death, no matter how gruesome or gratuitous, is never a patch on the cock-ups of the living; no emotion gets in the way of a good, pathological detail.

Nate's wife Lisa's demise by drowning has been a storyline shrouded in mystery and histrionics but saved from pure melodrama by its gruesome, forensic side.

Brother David, picking up the body from the morgue, was treated to a graphic description of the effects of death by drowning before managing to announce that the corpse was his sister-in-law.

It was helped along, too, by Nate's disrespect for the troublesome relatives of the dead. He sent them home believing the ashes of a stranger were their daughter while he buried Lisa's body as she would have wished.

Six Feet Under's return is welcome relief from those run-of-mill American crime dramas. After all, this is the only show on the box in which a family argument can be interrupted with a line like that from embarrassed employee Arthur last week: "I'll just go back to re-alphabetising the unclaimed cremains." Excellent. The gormless apprentice mortician must never be allowed to get a personality.

Last week's opening episode had a lot of loose ends to tie up after last season's finale but the funerary family drama will need to broaden its horizons beyond the sexual relationships of its core members to avoid becoming as moribund as its subject matter.

So far, only the reappearance of the intelligently disturbed Brenda (Rachel Griffiths), with her plan to become a psychotherapist, looks set to take the drama down an interesting new twist in the road. It's certainly disturbing to think what counselling with anyone as self-absorbed as Brenda might have to offer the afflicted.

For the rest of the cast it just seems business as usual.

Matriarch Ruth, whose character arc has been one of the more fascinating (liberation from an oppressive marriage, relationship with mad Russian florist, shoplifting with kleptomaniac friend, flirtation with self-empowerment California-style) is looking to have a few doubts about sinking back into dull domesticity with new husband George.

But maybe that's wishful thinking, after being treated to Mom and George's noisy celebration of the joy of sex.

Nate, grief-ridden or guilt-ridden (do we care?) at the death of a wife he felt ambivalent about at best, is still struggling with the same old problem he had at the beginning: the need to make choices for himself instead of being sucked into the needs of wilful women or his family.

Meanwhile, art student Clare was busy taking the advice of her tutor and looking to "break her eye open" to see things afresh.

It was a theme going begging and sure enough David seized upon it for yet another round in his tired, on-again, off-again relationship with Keith.

At least Clare is smart enough to treat herself with the disdain she deserves, referring sarcastically to her "cushy and alienated life". Keith and David are so exhausted with themselves they just slump in front of the television.

But Clare's theme has a wider application.

Six Feet Under has been resting on its funerary laurels - make that wreaths - and has become formulaic.

It broke new ground in putting death under the hot, sometimes lurid glare of the California sun and seeing what shadows it cast upon the living. Now it is time to see the funeral home life afresh.