Within the pantheon of great dramas that have aired on HBO, it feels somewhat difficult to determine a holy trinity, mostly because that third spot is contended. It feels safe to assume most would nominate The Sopranos and The Wire to take up two of the slots, given how acclaimed they are and how well they’ve held up (the former was a hit while on the air, and is still loved, with the latter taking time to get the acclaim it deserved). As for show #3? Oz should be considered, given how it predated even The Sopranos. Deadwood was excellent, if a little short-lived, and Game of Thrones was great, but may have had the opposite problem; it perhaps lived too long and its final seasons weren’t exactly spectacular. Perhaps Succession has a shot, but if not, that leaves Six Feet Under: a less flashy drama without crime, Western, or fantasy/action elements, but a riveting show nonetheless.
Six Feet Under centers on the Fisher family, a dysfunctional group of people who run Fisher & Sons Funeral Home, all the while dealing with inner demons, relationship struggles, and the overwhelming prevalence of death within their lives. It’s a show about mortality, the struggles of living, and the finite nature of existing on Earth, naturally being a heavy-going and oftentimes tragic show to watch. Yet Six Feet Under proved able to be darkly funny at times, with its earlier seasons arguably belonging more to the dramedy genre than the category of drama (things got heavier towards the show’s end, though). It wasn’t perfect throughout its run, but the majority of the show’s 63 episodes proved to be compelling television, and its five seasons are ranked below, starting with the good and ending with the best.
5 Season 4
Aired: June 13 to September 12, 2004
Most shows that run for five or more seasons will have a year that feels a little weaker than most. Even something as universally loved as Breaking Bad had a first season that doesn’t feel quite as great as what came after (though a Writers’ Strike had something to do with that). With Six Feet Under, it’s the fourth season where the cracks started to show ever so slightly in what had, up until then, been a pretty consistent drama. It’s far from terrible television, but it stands out as a point in the show where beginning to wrap it up looked like it should happen sooner rather than later, and the writers thankfully realized this, leading to a much-improved final season.
Season 4 picks up in the wake of an alarming tragedy that uproots the life of Nate, the eldest of the Fisher children, and has storylines that go in generally darker areas than ever before. This might feel fitting for a show about death and the running of a funeral home, but the execution isn’t ideal, and such turns don’t always lead to better and more engaging drama. Beyond fairly strong opening and closing hours, most of season 4’s episodes are decent to good, though not great. The only other standout – for better or worse – is the divisive fifth episode, “That’s My Dog,” which sees David – the middle child of the Fisher siblings – get kidnapped and forced into a thriller-type story that feels out of character for the show, even if it is undeniably memorable and ultimately intense.
4 Season 3
Aired: March 2 to June 1, 2003
Season 3 of Six Feet Under feels like a slight step-down in quality after the two strong previous seasons, but it’s still overall better and more consistent than season 4. A decent chunk of the season is defined by the character of Lisa, who briefly marries Nate before tragedy eventually strikes, sending Nate back to his on-and-off girlfriend, Brenda Chenowith, in the show’s later seasons. Lisa is a potentially divisive character, but that might be a result of her not having as much screen time as other characters. After all, just about every significant character on Six Feet Under is heavily flawed and even frustrating at times, but the more prominent characters do get a greater number of moments that show off their positive qualities.
Elsewhere, Six Feet Under’s third season chugs along quite comfortably, demonstrating itself as a show that was confident with the rhythm that the prior seasons had established. Those wanting a serious shake-up to the formula wouldn’t get it until the very heavy-going season finale, “I’m Sorry, I’m Lost,” which is a great episode, even if it does partially provide a way for season 4 to go a little off the rails. Beyond the season 3 finale, another highlight from this year was “Death Works Overtime,” the season’s 11th episode that sees the funeral home struggling to deal with three deceased people all at once, as opposed to most episodes, which focus on a single individual whose moment of death is shown in each episode’s opening scene.
3 Season 1
Aired: June 3 to August 19, 2001
Six Feet Under got off to an incredible start with its pilot episode, which would be a contender for the best episode in the show’s entire run if not for how great the series finale ended up being (more on that in a bit). Simply called “Pilot,” this debut episode shows life as “normal” for the Fisher family… for the space of just a few minutes. Within almost no time at all, the family patriarch, Nathaniel Fisher Sr., is killed suddenly in a car accident, with the audience’s introduction to the other characters of the show essentially being how they react to losing someone so close to them. It’s thankfully not like a Succession kind of thing, though, where family members compete; there is a sense of cooperation and shared trauma being processed with the loss.
Nathaniel Sr. continues to haunt the show and its characters, appearing in dreams or flashbacks, and eventually, struggles do reveal themselves when it comes to dealing with who’s to do what at the funeral home, now that the de facto leader is gone. It’s an instantly engaging hook for the show to have, and also establishes stakes straight away by having someone who’d otherwise be a main character (and kind of is, at least if you count dreams/flashbacks) die instantly. The pilot episode sets up plenty of compelling drama to play out for the rest of Six Feet Under’s first season, and it’s an overall strong one that proves pretty hard to fault.
2 Season 2
Aired: March 3 to June 2, 2002
Season 2 sometimes feels a little hard to differentiate from season 1, beyond saying that it’s pretty much that first season, but just ever-so-slightly stronger. Things have settled into something of a groove after Nathaniel Sr.’s death, and it is the rare season of Six Feet Under where no main character deaths occur (they’re not so lucky in season 3, David almost dies in season 4, and then season 5… well, season 5 is season 5). Drama finds other ways to continue affecting the lives of the Fishers, though, with tension established here between Nate, Lisa, and Brenda, and Nate also struggles with a diagnosis of arteriovenous malformation (AVM), a medical complication that has effects for him far beyond just season 2.
The season also features a Christmas-themed episode with the appropriately named “It’s the Most Wonderful Time of the Year,” even though it aired in April 2002, and then later in the season, there’s a birth within the family to contrast against all the death that happens elsewhere in the show. Season 2 skillfully builds more drama and conflict among the characters without things ever feeling too melodramatic or too much like a soap opera, which are criticisms one could potentially direct towards the slightly less outstanding (but still mostly good) third and fourth seasons.
1 Season 5
Aired: June 6 to August 21, 2005
The tagline for the final season of Six Feet Under was fitting, and also proved to be something of a warning for how heavy the last batch of episodes would get. Said tagline was: “Everything. Everyone. Everywhere. Ends.” Viewers had seen dozens of one-off characters get killed in every episode’s opening sequence over the years, much the same way that Nathaniel Sr. had abruptly died during the pilot episode. But by season 5, all bets were off, and the Fisher family found themselves just as shattered as they were at the start of season 1 in the wake of another tragedy. Now that viewers know these characters better, seeing them go through intense grieving processes hits much harder than it did when they were grieving the family patriarch (and those moments were already quite harrowing).
The last several episodes of season 5 become about healing and the gradual process of moving on, all the while accepting that the feelings that come with suffering a great loss within the family will never go away. It all makes for extremely powerful television, and it’s a sign that these characters – though still very much imperfect – have grown and matured in various ways over the show, particularly the youngest Fisher child, Claire. She feels as though she takes the spot as the central character for the jaw-dropping series finale, “Everyone’s Waiting,” which fulfills the season’s tagline in a bittersweet and unforgettable manner. The rest of season 5 could’ve been terrible, and the strength of that finale would still make season 5 the potential best of Six Feet Under’s run. It’s a finale that really is that good, and is also a big reason why Six Feet Under can be considered one of the all-time great TV dramas (especially in contrast to certain shows that don’t end on anything close to a high note).
Six Feet Under can be streamed on Max in the U.S.
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