Six Feet Under - Season 1

It's hard to imagine how two shows so diametrically opposed in terms of subject matter and balance between actual writing quality and shock value entertainment such as Six Feet Under and True Blood could be created by the same guy. About the only thing they have in common is a fixation on death and gay rights, although Blood mostly uses the latter as a metaphor with vampires. I enjoy Blood, but Six Feet Under is a far superior series; extremely well-written and acted, combining a good drama about a family and their relationships with a great, dark sense of humor and a clever use of dreams and conversations with dead people to explore what the characters are thinking.

Each episode starts with someone dying. Sometimes it's humorous in a sick kind of way thanks to clever misdirection or a completely ludicrous set-up, and sometimes it's just sad. That body ends up in the Fisher brothers' funeral home, and things continue from there as they live their lives and maybe learn something from the victim. Peter Krause and Michael C. Hall from Dexter are great as the two leads, and the rest of the cast does a stellar job too. When this show was actually airing I didn't think I'd like it for whatever reason, maybe because I didn't think there was enough gun fights and car chases. But watching it now, it's just another example of how HBO in the first half of this decade was a golden age of good television. Really enjoyable, smart show.