‘Six Feet Under’ chills to funny bone

Perhaps I am old-fashioned. I used to pride myself on the length and breadth of my sense of humor, especially the sick, mordant, twisted kind. Think “Blazing Saddles” or “Airplane.” Especially “Bedazzled.”

But some alleged humor leaves me cold and well, humorless. Think Andy Kaufman. Think David Brenner. Think “Curb Your Enthusiasm.” Especially “Six Feet Under.”

First of all, you have to have HBO to get “Six Feet Under.” Don’t bother.

The only reason I have ever seen the show is, first of all, Blue Eyes has HBO. Second of all, it followed the immensely popular and fabulous “Sopranos” on Sunday night.

When I was too lazy to get off the floor and turn off the television after watching Tony Soprano and his crew, “Six Feet Under” would come on.

Since the show, based around a funeral home and the family that lives there, always starts with a death, I always turned it off. Last week a woman succumbed to a particularly messy nosebleed in the opening scene. Yikes!

But The New York Times and other cultural beacons continue to extol “the best series on television at the moment,” so I struggle to sit through it, keep culturally current and to see what I am missing. I have watched a dozen shows, but I give up. It is just too sad, too depressing to waste one more hour. Never mind the critics.

The show centers on the widow Ruth Fisher (her husband drove his hearse in front of a bus) and her three loser children, the dying (brain tumor) Nate, the terminally mopey Claire and the recently decloseted David.

Each week, at least one conversation occurs in the family business center while the apprentice mortician applies makeup to the recently departed. This is funny?

Last week, the latest customer was a 500-pound problem who was much too big for the normal coffin. I presume it was supposed to be funny when the customer fell out of the coffin onto the floor and the family had to scramble to pick him up and find a new “box” before the scheduled services. I must have missed something.

All right, it was amusing last year when Nate had this girlfriend, Brenda, who just loved (literally) everyone around her, including the paperboy, pizza delivery boy and every third man she met. That kept the show moving. She apparently was too entertaining for the critics, so they got rid of her this season.

David has the most boring relationship possible with a gay black policeman, Keith, played by Matthew St. Patrick. What the burly St. Patrick sees in the whining David is never explained. Makes you wonder why they bothered.

Mostly now, I watch it to see what the critics see in it. After all, the Times said Sunday that the show was “mordantly written and acutely observed.” It is also “profound, wryly funny and moving.”

I think critics get together every few years, have a few Cosmopolitans, pick a subject (think Jerry Lewis) and extol its virtues to see how much we will swallow. This time it was “Six Feet Under.”

Even I am not this dumb. This group makes my family look good. I cannot figure out for the life of me why they ever made the second episode, let alone the third season.

It’s no wonder the father drove in front of that bus. He is in a better place.

Send complaints and compliments to Emmet Meara at emmetmeara@msn.com.