In the pilot episode of HBO’s hit series Six Feet Under, funeral director Nathaniel Fisher Sr. is hit by a bus while driving home on Christmas Eve. Receiving news of her husband’s untimely death, Ruth Fisher hurls first the phone, then the Christmas dinner she is in the midst of cooking, to the ground. A tray of roasted meat and vegetables clatters to the floor. Amidst staccato shrieks, she sweeps jars, pots, knives and plates from the worktop, then sits hunched against the oven, the dismantled debris of a pot roast around her feet. A ladle, slicked with grease, lies redundant on its side. ‘Your father is dead,’ she tells her son. ‘And my pot roast is ruined.’