I guess I kind of figured this wouldn't last long and it may not be as good as it used to, but it still beats most shows on television. Still a bummer though.



HBO Ready to Bury 'Six Feet'
Sat Nov 6, 8:25 AM ET

By Nellie Andreeva

LOS ANGELES (Hollywood Reporter) - HBO is preparing a eulogy for "Six Feet Under."

The pay cabler confirmed Friday that the upcoming fifth season of "Six Feet" will be the last for the ensemble drama revolving around the trials and tribulations of a family that runs a mortuary. Series creator/executive producer Alan Ball recently informed HBO executives that he felt the show will have run its creative course by the end of the upcoming 12-episode season.

"Working on 'Six Feet Under' has been enormously fulfilling creatively, but if the show is about anything, it's about the fact that everything comes to an end," Ball said in a statement. "I will miss working with such enormously talented writers, cast, staff and crew and I'll always be grateful to HBO for allowing and encouraging us to tell the story we set out to tell in a challenging and uncompromising way."

"Six Feet" has been a critical darling for HBO, if not a commercial hit on the scale of "The Sopranos" or "Sex and the City," since its 2001 debut. The drama -- whose ensemble cast includes Peter Krause, Michael C. Hall, Rachel Griffiths (news), Lauren Ambrose (news) and Frances Conroy -- has been showered with Emmy nominations -- it earned 16 Emmy bids in 2002, its first year of eligibility, and 23 noms in 2003 -- but has yet to claim the top drama series prize in the annual Emmy derby.

"Six Feet" is a project that has been particularly close to the heart of Carolyn Strauss, HBO entertainment president, who originally dreamed up the notion of doing a series set in a mortuary. She pitched the idea to Ball, who was then hot off the success of his Oscar-winning screenplay for "American Beauty," and the writer-producer fell for it immediately.

"Dealing with death seemed like a very common experience that we could all relate to, and (the mortuary setting) seemed like a great lens for a fairly ironic show," Strauss said. "It also seemed like the kind of show that only (HBO) could do."

Strauss was quick to praise Ball and the rest of the "Six Feet" crew for "all the impressive work. It's been a fantastic experience to be associated with this show," she said.

Production on "Six Feet's" fifth season is set to begin Nov. 16, but a premiere date has not yet been set, Strauss said. Word of "Six Feet's" swan song season comes at a time when HBO is already in a transitional phase after bidding farewell to "Sex and the City" this year, while its other original series tentpole, "The Sopranos," isn't due back for its final season until 2006.

HBO has the sophomore season of its wild Western "Deadwood" on tap to premiere in January, followed in March by the return of Depression-era drama "Carnivale." Other series in the production pipeline at HBO are "Big Love," starring Bill Pullman as a modern-day polygamist in Utah, and the big-budget costume drama "Rome."

Reuters/Hollywood Reporter

More room for "The Wire". Best show on TV. Period.

thank god for hbo. theyre the only ones actually putting out good tv these days.

after the last season this makes me kinda happy to see it go.

Arrested Development
Desperate Housewives
Lost

I"m not really contributing here...but Cotton, this:



is cool!

McGuirk rocks.

oh yeah, forgot about arrested development. havent seen the other two, although ive heard a lot about them. somehow, desperate housewives seems more like a porno than a tv show.

Yep; i like "The Shield"as well...

Damn straight. My roommate aspires to be Vic Mackey.

McGuirk is so me in 5 years it's kinda sad....


Arrested Development S.2 is starting tomorrow night. I'm having a Chil;i cookoff, watching the Eagles fuck up the steelers, downing wine and...doesn't that new Adult Swim cartoon premiere tomorrow night? Squidbillies? what the hell

Dudes... Scrubs! Always brings the funny.

Also, been digging Veronica Mars. Same guy behind the show Cupid is behind this aswell.

5 years is long enough. Shows usually go down the crapper around season 4. Glad they're going sorta on top of their game.

I completely agree with this assessment.

After more than three years of CMJ BB/obner-dom, I FINALLY get to namedrop!!!

The gentleman to whom you refer is named Rob Thomas (no, Stacey, not YOUR Rob Thomas), and I went to high school with him. He was a year older than me, but we were somewhere between mere acquantances and actual friends. In fact, I kind of quasi-idolized the guy. So much so that I specifically requested his uniform number in basketball (25), the year I played varsity after he graduated. We played the same position (center).

Basketball is actually what first brought us together. The first time I ever met non-Matchbox20-Rob Thomas was at the San Antonio Spurs Summer Camp for Unathletic Upper Middle Class White Boys, back in 1979. At the time, he had just moved to Texas from Seattle, and I didn't yet know that he and I would end up in the same school (Owen Goodnight Jr. High) that Fall (he entering 8th grade, me 7th).

One afternoon, while walking back to the dorms from the swimming pool, my roommate that week (whose name I cannot recall), popped me in the ass with a wet towel. For some inexplicable reason, I blurted out, "I'LL GET YOU IN BED TONIGHT!," oblivious to the litany of homoerotic implications that would be mined for the most brutal form of comedic degradation the remainder of that sweltering summer week. Well, like a knight on a white stallion, non-Matchbox20-Rob Thomas rode in to my defense by quashing the taunt-filled uprising with his own razor-sharp wit.

Over the years, in addition to frequently being tasked with the unenviable chore of unsuccessfully defending non-Matchbox20-Rob Thomas in the low post during hundreds of practices, I would often run into him at the local indie record concern (Sundance Records -- yeah, it was owned by a hippie couple). He was an even bigger music nut than me! In fact, he led several bands during the later years of high school and into college, including Public Bulletin and Hey, Zeus! He played football at TCU on scholarship from then coach (the late, great) Jim Wacker.

Several years after high school, he stopped in to dine at the local pizza parlor (Valentino's) at which I spent three years of college delivering pie. He was a bit down at the time, because he had just ended his long-term relationship with a local beauty named Cinnamon Stouffer, whose father happened to be my dad's workplace nemesis. She also went on to some degree of fame as the re-named "Linda" Stouffer on CNN Headline News.

So, anyway, that's my non-Matchbox20-Rob Thomas story. He's cool, and I'm pretty sure he's nailed TV's Paula Marshall.

Whoops! in other news, the bengals won.

ha! Yes, I know (of) this fellow, Bob, being a (at least at one point) fountain of matchbox twenty knowledge. matchbox twenty Rob Thomas signed a napkin for the non-matchbox twenty Rob Thomas at one point that, I believe, non-matchbox twenty Rob Thomas displayed on his web page. Right?

I quite enjoyed reading your story.

Tooo...much...Rob...Thomas

My plan is working! muaaahahaha

FT: That's pretty fucking cool. The man is a TV genius on par with Joss Whedon. The man can do no wrong in my eyes.

Hvae you recognised anything in his tv work that you lived trough while being friends with the man?

I bet he nailed Paula Marshall too. He's one lucky bastard.

Missed the news on Six Feet Under.... can certainly understand why after 5 years it's getting the axe tho.


Agree that HBO is consistently must see TV in their original series and shows compared to network.

The Wire is absolutely my favorite show over the past few years... Got hooked the first season and now (3rd?) I'm a junkie in Amsterdam trying to sell to others.

Here's to HBO developing a deal where they give a season - 14 episodes, to artists to make whatever the hell they want to.

David Lynch, please report to HBO... I'd assplode.