A few years ago a comedy-drama about undertakers would have been a dead loss, but now death is not so much a dying business for TV producers

In the week before ITV1 begins a new fly-on-the-chapel-of-rest-wall series about undertakers, the American comedy-drama series Six Feet Under has grabbed 16 nominations in the US Emmy awards.

Clearly, death isn't a dying business on television. It's very much alive in the minds of TV producers, who've come to realise that a subject once regarded as taboo can make good television.

All human life is represented in death and the procedures that follow, and viewers have become more willing to be reminded of their own mortality.

Once undertakers were merely figures of fun, and not considered as leading players in shows, both factual and fictional. Coffins were props in horror movies, their lids slowly creaking open to reveal a blood-thirsty Christopher Lee.

Pathologists paved the way and made viewers accustomed to seeing corpses on the mortuary slab cut up and organs removed in as much grisly detail as the special effects crew could muster.

Series in the 1960s and 1970s, including the BBC's The Expert and US import Quincy, shied away from the gruesome aspects. Dr Sam Ryan adopted a different approach. No episode of Silent Witness was complete without Amanda Burton's stoney-faced pathologist taking a scalpel to a corpse. ITV had John Hannah as McCallum to do the same job.

Before that, TV used death for laughs. Bill Fraser blustered his way through That's Your Funeral, as the bombastic funeral director in a Northern firm. It was broad, harmless fun unlikely to offend anybody. Only in a film version did producers dare make the comedy darker and include a car chase with hearses.

Viewers preferred their funerals gentler. In Loving Memory killed off owner Jeremiah Unsworth in the opening episode, leaving his widow and gormless nephew to run the funeral business.

The 1969 pilot made by Thames wasn't picked up - and then by Yorkshire Television - until ten years later. Five series were made starring Thora Hird and Christopher Beeny.

Writer Dick Sharples set the series in a fictional Lancashire mill town in the 1930s, when the switch from horse-drawn hearses to mechanisation was taking place. The idea arose from an overheard pub conversation about a hearse that shed its coffin in the street after hitting a pothole.

As the search for new subjects for reality series became more desperate, it was only a matter of time before undertakers were considered.

Executive producer Debbie Gaunt calls Don't Drop The Coffin - described as "the real Six Feet Under" - ground-breaking, offering unique access into a closed world.

The series follows life and death at one of the UK's oldest funeral directors, FA Albin and Sons, based in South London. Producer Stephen Joel became fascinated by the whole business after reading owner Barry Dyer's book. "I'd only every been to one funeral, I'd never seen a dead body, and I didn't have a clue what embalming was. I got halfway through the book and decided it would make a great TV series," he says.

Dyer had his own motives for appearing. "I wanted to do a documentary that shows the funeral industry for what it really is - the fourth emergency service," he says.

"I really honestly feel that for years we've be maligned and in a position where people see us falsely. If you call me an undertaker or a funeral director it doesn't really matter, people still think the same thing - po-faced, miserable and dark.

"The job I have is such a beautiful gift because you are close to people when they need you most. They don't know what to do, so they are saying to me, 'Come and be part of our family for a few days, we need you there,' and that's fantastic."

He also thought it might help people gain an understanding of what happens after someone dies. "Bereavement is the biggest illness in the world. People who are grieving are genuinely sick," he says.

"I wanted to do something definitive about it and show that you don't have to be afraid of the people who look after your loved ones when they die. A lot goes into a funeral and we are all normal people who enjoy having a laugh, but who happen to be doing a very difficult job."

As the series is going out pre-watershed, clear guidelines were drawn up. Dead bodies aren't shown, except in the background, and embalming isn't demonstrated.

The experience was an unusual one for the crew. "Some had seen deceased people before, others hadn't," says Joel. "The first time I came I saw one in the Chapel of Rest. I thought it was a mannequin for showing people how they were laid out. There was something quite peaceful about it."

Next month Tyne Tees Television screens its own documentary, A Dying Business, about death. They talk to an 83-year-old stone-cutter who inscribes memorials (and has already cut his own), and an embalmer who reveals how he makes bodies appear at peace.

They also feature Mark Smith, from Sunderland, who defies the usual idea of a funeral director. He's only 29 with a spiky hairstyle. "People don't expect someone like me to come into their home. But they think it's great," he says.

Viewers' appetite for such things is growing. A televised public autopsy on C4 was a success. Now they plan to show the autopsy of a "twin" who was surgically removed from his young brother's stomach after he complained something was moving about inside him.

Thankfully, nothing we're seen in real life equals the antics of the dysfunctional family of funeral directors in Six Feet Under, where each episode opens with a death and a fresh corpse for the business.

A few years ago a comedy-drama about undertakers would have been considered a dead loss. Now it's an award-winner.

* Six Feet Under: Sunday, C4, 10pm.

Don't Drop The Coffin: Tuesday, ITV1, 8.30pm.

* A Dying Business: August 22, Tyne Tees,11pm.

Published: 19/07/2003