Six Feet Under - People always die

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Television series
German title Six Feet Under - People always die
Original title Six Feet Under
Six Feet Under Logo.png
Country of production United States
original language English
Year (s) 2001-2005
Production
company		 Home Box Office ,
The Greenblatt Janollari Studio ,
Actual Size Films ,
Actual Size Productions
length 51-62 minutes
Episodes 63 in 5 seasons ( list )
genre Dramedy
idea Alan Ball
production Alan Ball ,
Lori Jo Nemhauser ,
Alan Poul
music Thomas Newman ,
Richard Marvin
First broadcast June 3, 2001 (USA) on HBO
German-language
first broadcast		 April 13, 2003 on premiere
occupation

Six Feet Under - Died always (original title: Six Feet Under ) is one of Alan Ball wrote American television series , which for five seasons from 2001 to 2005 by the Pay TV transmitter HBO aired. It was the station's first dramatic series after The Sopranos and is now considered one of the classic HBO series. She has received numerous awards, including seven Emmys and three Golden Globe Awards .

action

Six Feet Under is a family saga about the Los Angeles-based Fisher family that combines dark humor with dramatic elements . The starting point of the series is the death of Nathaniel Fisher Sr., undertaker, in a traffic accident. The funeral home is then continued by his sons, brothers Nate and David. In addition to them, Ruth, the widow, and the adolescent sister Claire are part of the family, and Rico also works as an embalmer in the funeral home .

Nathaniel's death is sometimes interpreted as a symbol for the disappearance of patriarchal conditions, so in many episodes the series tries to find a "positive answer to the question of how society could develop without patriarchal leadership". The series follows the further life paths of the family members and their immediate environment, their conflicts and self-discoveries. In addition to death, a central additional motif are relationships based on partnership. Against this background, social issues such as age, homosexuality, gender , the inner strife of adolescents, racial conflicts, mental illnesses and drug addiction are circled. The macabre humor, on the other hand, fades into the background more and more in the course of the series.

Each episode begins with a death, which is the introduction to this episode and also serves as a door opener. These deaths range from the banal to the absurd, comical to the tragic. Usually the deceased are buried by the Fishers.

characters

  • Ruth O'Connor Fisher - (played by Frances Conroy ; voice actress: Regine Albrecht ), is the widow and mother of the three Fisher children. She was having an affair with a hairdresser at the time of her husband Nathaniel's death. It later ends in favor of a relationship with her employer, a Russian florist. She has a sister, Sarah O'Connor. She later married George Sibley, from whom she separated again after his severe mental illness.
  • Nathaniel Fisher - (played by Richard Jenkins ; voice actor: Hans-Werner Bussinger ), is the father of the three Fisher children. He appears - although he dies in the first episode - repeatedly in the thoughts and dreams of the Fishers.
  • Nate Fisher - (played by Peter Krause ; voice actor : Charles Rettinghaus ), is the son who wants to visit the family in Los Angeles for Christmas and learns during a quickie with the previously unknown Brenda that his father has died. Reluctantly at first, but with increasing interest, he and his brother David take over the family business. He becomes the father of Maya (with Lisa) and Willa (with Brenda).
  • David Fisher - (played by Michael C. Hall ; voice actor: Dennis Schmidt-Foss ), is the younger son who has been running the business with his father for a long time. He is gay and has a relationship with the (former) police officer Keith Charles, with whom he also adopted two African-American children (brothers). It wasn't until a while after his father's death that he saw his coming out .
  • Hector Federico Diaz - (played by Freddy Rodríguez ; voice actor: Marius Clarén ), is an embalmer employed by the company . He came to the Fishers when his father died, leaves the company in the meantime, but comes back and becomes a partner . He has two children and is married to Vanessa, who separates from him after an affair.
  • George Sibley - (played by James Cromwell ; voice actor: Jochen Schröder ), Ruth's new husband, who has been married six times and has three children. He suffers from a serious mental illness which breaks out the marriage.
  • Lisa Kimmel Fisher - (played by Lili Taylor ; voice actress : Tanja Geke ), Nate's friend from Seattle . She becomes pregnant while visiting Nate and marries him. She later disappears and is found drowned in what turns out to be murder by her brother-in-law.

production

The Fishers House

In 2000, Alan Ball received an Oscar for his screenplay for the critically acclaimed American Beauty film . Shortly thereafter, Carolyn Strauss approached him, who was then senior vice president of in-house productions at HBO. Strauss asked him if he was interested in developing a series for HBO.

Ball presented a concept that he had developed based on the common motif of two of Strauss's favorite films, Harold and Maude and Death in Hollywood , both of which revolved around the theme of "death" as black comedies . After Ball also wrote the pilot, he received a firm commitment for a 13-part season, HBO granted him almost complete artistic freedom. Ball also said that without The Sopranos he would never have been "so excited about the possibilities of television".

Autobiographical events such as the death of Ball's older sister in a car accident in his presence when he was 13 and the cancer death of his father six years later had important influences on the character of the series. But books like The American Way of Death by Jessica Mitford and Bodies in Motion and at Rest as well as The Undertaking by the American poet and undertaker Thomas Lynch were important, Ball also asked the scriptwriters and actors to read the books before the start of the recording.

Even before the first season was broadcast, HBO commissioned Ball with a second.

Rod

Ball placed great emphasis on an eclectic mix of unconventional writers and directors. The seven lead authors, namely Bruce Eric Kaplan ( Seinfeld ), Rick Cleveland ( The West Wing ), Laurence Andries , Scott Buck , Jill Soloway , Christian Taylor and Kate Robins were called together by Ball to share ideas for each individual with him as the last resort Collect episodes and develop characters and storylines. Only then did the authors receive the commission to work out the scripts on the basis of the joint preliminary work, an unusual procedure since the scripts on television were usually not prepared in teamwork.

Ball proceeded in a similar way when selecting the directors. Teamwork in the creative preparation did not play the role here as it did with the authors, but here too unconventional directors with different styles were required. Among them were well-known independent film directors such as Ted Demme , Rose Troche , Nicole Holofcener , Lisa Cholodenko and Miguel Arteta , but also television directors such as Michael Engler , Daniel Attias and Allen Coutler, as well as Kathy Bates (also active as an actress in the series) and Rodrigo Garcia . This combination is considered to be an important basis for the distinctively original appearance of the series.

Various people were responsible for the soundtrack, namely the award-winning Thomas Newman (including American Beauty ) for the title music, Richard Marvin for the other original music and Thomas Golubic and Gary Calamar for the selection of third-party compositions. Ball retained overall control over the musical design, on the one hand because he himself had profound knowledge of the subject and on the other hand because he attached great dramatic importance to the music in the series.

aesthetics

With Alan Caso, Ball looked for a cameraman who, together with the authors, developed an “anti-television language” that was supposed to give the series a cinematic quality, supported by a widescreen format from the third season onwards. Ball used his own pictures of funeral homes with subtle colors, flattering music and a feeling of timelessness. Caso implemented this in very picturesque pictures with desaturated colors and natural light. Caso particularly avoided moving the camera in order to create theater-like images.

Broadcasts

The series debuted on HBO on June 3, 2001 and ended on August 21, 2005 after the fifth season.

In Germany, Six Feet Under ran on the television station VOX from May 11, 2004 to March 15, 2006. In Austria, the series was shown on ORF 1 on Thursday night . In January 2011, ZDFneo broadcast the series without advertising.

reception

The series received unanimous praise from audiences and critics. With an average of 5 million viewers per week, it far surpassed the comparable value of the Sopranos at its premiere (3.3 million per week in the first season).

Awards (selection)

In total, the series won 46 awards and was nominated for 117, including:

Screen Actors Guild Awards

2002
  • Best Ensemble (nomination)
  • Best Actor (Drama / Series): Peter Krause (nomination)
2003
  • Best ensemble
2004
  • Best ensemble
  • Best Actress (Drama / Series): Frances Conroy
  • Best Actor (Drama / Series): Peter Krause (nomination)
2005
  • Best Ensemble (nomination)

Golden Globe Awards

2002
  • Best TV Series (Drama)
  • Best Supporting Actress (Drama / Series): Rachel Griffiths
  • Best Actor (Drama / Series): Peter Krause (nomination)
2003
  • Best TV Series (Drama) (Nomination)
  • Best Actress (Drama / Series): Rachel Griffiths (nomination)
  • Best Actor (Drama / Series): Peter Krause (nomination)
2004
  • Best TV Series (Drama) (Nomination)
  • Best Actress (Drama / Series): Frances Conroy

Emmy Awards

2002
  • Best Casting (Drama / Series)
  • Best Director (drama / series): Alan Ball (pilot episode)
  • Best Guest Role (Drama / Series): Patricia Clarkson
  • Best title design
  • Best theme music: Thomas Newman
  • Best Make Up (Drama / Series)
  • 17 other nominations
2003
  • Best Casting (Drama / Series)
  • 15 more nominations
2006
  • Best Guest Role (Drama / Series): Patricia Clarkson
  • Best Make-Up (Drama / Series)
  • 7 more nominations

literature

  • Claudia Lillge: Beyond the series principle: Six Feet Under. In: Claudia Lillge, Dustin Breitenwischer, Jörn Glasenapp , Elisabeth K. Paefgen (Hrsg.): The new American television series. From Twin Peaks to Mad Men. Fink, Paderborn 2014, ISBN 978-3-7705-5690-8 , pp. 45-81.
  • Alan Ball, Alan Poul: Six Feet Under. Better Living Through Death - There is always death . Schwarzkopf & Schwarzkopf, 2005, ISBN 3-89602-641-0 .
  • Kim Akass, Janet McCabe (Eds.): Reading Six Feet Under. TV To Die For. Tauris, London / New York 2005.
  • Thomas Klein: Die in series. The HBO production Six Feet Under. In: Christian Hißnauer, Andreas Jahn-Sudmann (Hrsg.): Medien-Zeit -zeichen . Contributions to the 19th Colloquium on Film and Television Studies. Schüren, Marburg 2007, pp. 108–115.
  • Mecca Jamilah Sullivan: Six Feet Under, Above, Beyond. In: GLQ: A Journal of Lesbian and Gay Studies. 15.1, 2009.
  • Merri Lisa Johnson: From Relationship Autopsy to Romantic Utopia: The Missing Discourse of Egalitarian Marriage on HBO's Six Feet Under. In: Discourse. 26.3, 2004.
  • Jason Mittell: Narrative Complexity in Contemporary American Television. In: The Velvet Light Trap. 58, 2006.

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ a b c d e f g h i j k Kim Akass, Janet McCabe: Six Feet Under. In: Gary R. Edgerton, Jeffrey P. Jones (Eds.): The Essential HBO Reader. 2008, ISBN 978-0-8131-2452-0 , pp. 71-81.
  2. ↑ a b six-feet-under.net: Six Feet Under ( Memento of the original from August 18, 2011 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The @1@ 2Template: Webachiv / IABot / six-feet-under.net archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. . Accessed November 11, 2011.
  3. ↑ Alexander Krei: ZDFneo starts the new year with “Six Feet Under”. DWDL.de , November 18, 2010, accessed on January 7, 2011 .