Just hear me out. I imagine the pitch meeting for Buried by the Bernards, beginning. A reality show about a funeral home. Yes, we re going through a pandemic that has claimed the lives of millions, yes, we re being terrorised by nightly death counts, and, sure, Black Lives Matter, but what the people really want right now is the Cosbys, with corpses.
Let s take a deep breath and just dive right in.
The Bernards are a real family from Tennessee who own a funeral home decorated like a museum of gaudy kitsch. The caskets are laid out in something that looks like a grandmother s powder room. There s a domineering matriarch, who could well be Tyler Perry in a wig, a zany uncle in a suit that says you re dead, let s disco , a put-upon teenage girl who didn t sign up for having to move corpses (gross!), and the supposed boss of the business, Ryan, who benignly presides over the staged squabbles and trumped-up power struggles.