In the mid-1960's, we had The Addams Family, The Munsters and Dark Shadows. With the start of the new millennium came a spate of new television series with death as a main theme:

• Six Feet Under - the first in the new crop, from HBO. The story of a dysfunctional family who own and operate a funeral home in sunny Southern California. The first episode starts with the family patriarch off to pick up one son on Christmas eve, coming home from Seattle to spend a week with the family. After being admonished on his cell phone by his wife for smoking in the new hearse (because it was going to ruin it for the future riders in the hearse), and while singing "I'll Be Home for Christmas" along with the radio, dear old dad, head of the family business, in the blink of an eye becomes dearly departed dad and newest cadaver at Fisher & Sons Funeral Home when the hearse is broadsided and totaled by a speeding bus in a spectacular crash. Each episode starts with the strange, occasionally sad or poignant, but more often and almost always humorous death of that week's customer. And an interesting note - episodes or scenes never fade to black - they always fade to white... Visit HBO's Six Feet Under website A little tip - click on Video and then Commercials to see the macabre, hilarious commercials that ran during the very first episode for various funereal products that were used during the episode. And of course, since I took the time to setup a webpage with information on the show, the 2004-2005 season was its last. But, I must say, the final episode did the absolutely best job of ANY TV show ever in tying up the loose ends and letting you know what happens to the characters...
    
• Dead Like Me - Two and a half years after Six Feet Under premiered, rival cable channel Showtime came up with Dead Like Me, the story of modern day grim reapers who walk among us. The first episode featured the death of main character Georgia AKA George. Taking its cue from Six Feet Under in the strange, but funny death department, 18 year old recent college drop-out George is depressed over life in general and her awful first three hours on her first job at a temp agency. Fate, or rather Rube (chief of the grim reapers), steps in. Walking down a Seattle street (well, in reality, Vancouver, BC substitutes for Seattle because filming is cheaper there without the high cost of U.S. union labor, but THAT's another story...) on her lunch hour, a steel toilet seat from the disintegrating Russian MIR space station plunges through the atmosphere and hurtles toward Earth, intersecting with George's cranium on the way. Rube announces to the dumbfounded (and now dead) George that she's now part of his team of reapers. Each day, they're given the name, location and time of death of one to several individuals and it's their job to touch each person seconds before their impending death, releasing their soul from the trauma of death, and to help guide them on their way to their portal to the other side. Visit Showtime's Dead Like Me Website And in keeping with the train of thought that my writing up a show is their kiss of death...yes...you got it right - the idiots at Showtime canceled the show after the first season. No tying up of on loose ends (What's Rube's story? Why was Georgie chosen? What happened to Betty after leaping into someone else's exit from life?) on this one. Just started running the season over again and announcing they'd canceled it.
   
• Family Plots - In 2004, using the popularity of HBO's Six Feet Under and various reality-based TV series as its cue, A&E presents Family Plots, about life in a real Southern California funeral home. For anyone thinking real life couldn't be as bizarre as it's shown on Six Feet Under, Family Plots proves that's correct - reality is even MORE bizarre at times. Visit A&E's Family Plots website If my writing about the two other series' is any indication, this one's plots about to be dug... <ginr>