Thanks to titles, 'Six Feet Under' starts with a bang

NEW YORK -- The HBO funeral-home drama "Six Feet Under" is a splendid undertaking. But the way it begins each week is magnificent.

Even after you see it dozens of times, the "Six Feet Under" opening can give you a start with its trippy take on life and death, despair and hope, the kookie and the divine.

Of course, it also lists the stars (who include Peter Krause, Michael C. Hall, Frances Conroy and Rachel Griffiths) and behind-the-camera principals. And it performs a most basic function: telling viewers the show's name.

And does it all in one-minute-40.

The opening-title sequence for any TV show is a valuable part of the program it serves. But in the case of "Six Feet Under" (whose second season is unfolding Sundays at 8 p.m.), it earns special notice as a cinematic gem in its own right.

Here's the fade-in. A raven cuts across a cloudless sky. Tilt down to a tree on the crest of a grassy hill. Then, in the foreground, clutching hands rise into view and fly apart.

Next: Someone's hands in tight close-up, one clasping the other. In grief? No, they're scrubbing up. These are hands of a mortician about to prepare a body. Then the body gets its close-up: feet with toe tag attached.

Onscreen credits come and go. One name appears on a beaker of embalming fluid. "Executive Producer Alan Ball" is digitally etched into a headstone.

Finally, back to the hill. The raven wings past. The tree sprouts a taproot in the shape of a rectangle (the casket?), which borders the words "Six Feet Under."

Then the last couple of credits. Fade out. The episode commences.

Did we mention that the haunting music that accompanies these images was created by Thomas Newman? It was he who composed the score for the 1999 film "American Beauty," for which Alan Ball wrote the Oscar-winning screenplay.

In the fall of 2000, when time came to craft the opening titles, Ball invited Newman to supply the theme.

As Newman recalls, "I wanted to capture some of the show's humor, wonder and profundity" he found in the pilot episode.