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Death be not proud!

7 comments on Death be not proud!

Death be not proud!
: This may be it — the low of lows for reality TV: A reality show set in a mortuary.

Death has never been so lively. Coming to A&E Network this spring is DEARLY DEPARTED, a powerful new series that chronicles the intense and peculiar days and nights of a Southern California family mortuary.

Three beautiful sisters, their quick-tempered father, an exacting boss, an eccentric funeral director known as “Rainman,” and an endless stream of corpses make up the core cast of this groundbreaking new reality show. DEARLY DEPARTED throws open the parlor door to the inner workings of a San Diego funeral home. The real story at Poway Bernardo Mortuary is how they compassionately console grieving families shattered by loss, as they love, love and fight as an extended family of their own.

This is a minute past snuff TV. Death isn’t funny, not real death. Fictional death may be entertaining on Six Feet Under. But in real life, death is sad — for everyone except a network executive, it appears.

What could be worse? Hospice: The Reality Show…. Child Cancer Ward: The Reality Show… Homeless Schizophrenic Psychotic Smelly Losers: The Reality Show… Network Executive: The Reality Show… [via PR Bop]

7 responses to “Death be not proud!”

  1. a.t.o. Avatar
    a.t.o.

    “Neroism is in the air…” “More grapes, Antoninus?”
    My brother and eye call this the burn-the-ant effect. People just love to watch others’ angst and struggle, and “reality TV” feeds that need. Combine this with our interest in the morbid, and the tedium of modern life, and this is what you get.

  2. a.t.o. Avatar
    a.t.o.

    note to self I have an eye. Pardon the typo.

  3. Terry Teachout Avatar
    Terry Teachout

    I once suggested (in an article about the “real” reality show “Cheaters”) that the next logical step was a show called “Terminal!” I think the exclamation point is–shall we say–the killer touch….

  4. a.t.o. Avatar
    a.t.o.

    You have to wonder just how depraved these studio execs think we are. (You also have to wonder who gets these Nielsen boxes).Next thing you know, they’ll be putting cameras in refugee camps, or trawling the World for the next genocide.
    I better stop, I have the feeling they are reading our suggestion, and will be pitching them in a bit (this IS lunchtime in Cali, right?).

  5. Easycure Avatar
    Easycure

    Don’t you remember the video tape series “Faces of Death”? There is a market for that sort of stuff. Gruesome? Yes. Bad taste? You bet. Irresponsible? Definitely. Should it be taken off the air? Probably. Will it? Probably not.
    I’m gonna stick to sports, thank you.

  6. lk Avatar
    lk

    Network execs are just doing their job. Many have an irrational fear of death, and maybe this show will make more people comfortable with their own mortality. We’re all going to end up there.

  7. Andrea Harris Avatar
    Andrea Harris

    “Homeless Schizophrenic Psychotic Smelly Losers: The Reality Show”

    Wasn’t that the original title of Temptation Island?