A Successful Undertaking

HBO is quick to boast that “Six Feet Under” drew larger audiences last year than any other freshman series in the cable network’s history, even outgunning “The Sopranos.”

And the darkly comic drama from “American Beauty” scribe Alan Ball won the Golden Globe for best dramatic TV series, upsetting Tony Soprano’s mob and NBC’s “The West Wing.”

But perhaps the most important indicator of its popularity? “Our extras casting director says she has a waiting list of people who want to be corpses,” says Ball, creator and executive producer of the series about a family-owned mortuary.

“One of the funniest things I hear now on the set is, ‘OK, cameras are rolling and dead people take a deep breath--and action!’”

Michael C. Hall, who plays mortician David Fisher, says that he often feels for the extras who play the dead bodies.

“Sometimes, they build a prosthetics thing onto their bodies so we can sew into it, so it looks like we’re stitching up actual flesh.

“I think it’s really strange for some people. They said [to themselves], ‘This is a good gig. I’ll go in and work a day’--and they find themselves lying on a slab in the prep room.”

The series explores life and death through the eyes of the dysfunctional Fisher family, which owns and operates Fisher & Sons Funeral Home in Los Angeles.

Besides Hall, “Six Feet Under” stars Peter Krause as Nate Fisher, David’s older brother, who returned home to work in the family business after the death of their father (Richard Jenkins); Frances Conroy as their scattered mother, Ruth; Lauren Ambrose as their troubled teenage sister, Claire; and Rachel Griffiths as Nate’s emotionally- charged girlfriend, Brenda.

“Six Feet Under,” which premiered last summer, returns for its second season of 13 episodes on Sunday.

Although the first season was shown while the broadcast networks were in reruns, the second is going up against new episodes of “The X-Files,” “Law & Order: Criminal Intent” and “Alias.”

But nobody seems worried. “We felt it had a lot of strength and momentum,” says Carolyn Strauss, HBO’s senior vice president of original programming.

“Alan was willing to be ready for March, so we took advantage of that.”

HBO always has been savvy in marketing its original series and movies. Strauss points out that the cable network did “a very big push for the show last year.

“Our marketing department is excellent at getting the word out. So I think this year we will have another very visible push for the show.”

Maybe too visible. “We are being asked to do lot of press while we are in production,” says Ball.

“We are all stretched a little more in that direction. Last year, it was very convenient that we finished production and we could do all the promotions stuff. This year we are having to balance that. It makes things a little more hectic.”

Ball, though, doesn’t feel any internal pressure over second season expectations. “For whatever reason, I am able to not pay attention to those things,” he says.

“I don’t know how to second guess what people want and give it to them. The few times in my life where I have tried to do that, I have failed miserably. All I know is how to do the show I would watch. That is what I am doing.”

Though Ball won’t give away plot points for the coming season, he does explain his decision to afflict Nate late last season with arteriovenous malformation--an unusually enlarged and entangled group of blood vessels--in his brain.

“Nate is a character who has been running away from death his entire life,” Ball says.

“It seemed like [death] would be his worst fear, in a way.

“We are all mortal, and something could happen to us at any moment, but for a man who grew up surrounded by death and has found discomfort with it, it seems like, in a lot of ways, this is the best thing that could happen to him because it is really going to force him to face his own mortality.”

“Six Feet Under” can be seen Sundays at 9 p.m. on HBO. The network has rated it TV-MA (unsuitable for children under 17).