24, Six Feet Under and Secret Life of Us

This article first appeared in the Saturday Age, on June 28th 2003.

24 (Monday, Channel 7, 8.30pm) was described in Salon, accurately I think, as veering from gripping realism to addictive high camp. You can rest assured that when the show ends in two episodes, realism has been left long behind.

How, and when, things end, is important. The looming ending of Buffy (Tuesday, Channel 7, 10.30pm) is a cause for much grief, but the flagging spirits of Sarah Michelle Gellar and Joss Whedon were becoming apparent. And ending things is fun. You can kill people off, unite them (will Buffy and Angel finally get together?) and make magic - because you don't have to worry about keeping the plot lines open for the next series. (Though there was the famous change of heart in Dallas when the death of Bobby, an event that's ramifications had unfolded over a whole season, turned out to be just a dream.)

The writer of The Secret Life of Us (Monday, Channel 10, 8.30pm), Judi McCrossin, was speaking at a seminar in Sydney recently and said she thought the show's time had come and she'd written a ripper of an ending - she just didn't know yet whether it was going to be used. Secret Life has been doing it tough only to swing things around in its last few terrific episodes. So, should they quit while the going is good or test their luck for one more season?

I recently watched the first season of Six Feet Under on DVD. I flounder searching for superlatives when writing about this series because it is so very good. Each episode is like a little, perfect, movie. You could tell at the end of the first season that it was intended to be the final episode and the last shot, composed as carefully as an Annie Leibovitz photo, showed a family coming together in resolution after a year of turmoil. Much as I enjoyed the second season, and hopefully will the third (to be screened on Channel 9 later this year) I almost wish it had had the courage of its convictions and ended with the beauty of that moment. Now we can look forward to Nate seemingly return from the dead, as Buffy did last year. That's the thing with these shows - as in Dallas, even death is no escape.

But back to 24. This week the show kills, imprisons and disables most of its characters, and unravels its plot to such an extent, that it is impossible to see how it will end. The final episode is full of the unexpected, taking us to the edge of yet another cliff and leaving us there. For all 24's flaws I have been fascinated by its key plot point - written before the war in Iraq - that it would be the greatest evil for the USA to begin a war in the Middle East based on false evidence. And that's what good endings achieve. They allow their character's, and in the case of 24 a nation, dignity.

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