Bryan Fuller is a master of mixing horror, fantasy, and black comedy. Before Crystal Lake, the Friday the 13th prequel whose premiere shares a story credit between Fuller and showrunner Brad Caleb Kane, Fuller became best known for bringing another iconic killer to television in Hannibal. But his fascination with death has also produced stories that are more quirky than terrifying.
If you enjoy Fuller’s work, there’s a criminally slept-on series that you need to check out. Dead Like Me captures his signature mix of the macabre and the whimsical, offering a window into his talent early on, before he became forever associated with a cannibal named Lecter. Even better, the entire series is streaming for free on Tubi.
Dead Like Me turns death into a dead-end job
Dead Like Me was the first TV show Fuller created. Debuting on Showtime in 2003, it follows Georgia “George” Lass (Ellen Muth), an 18-year-old college dropout whose cynical, aloof nature puts her at odds with the rest of her family. After getting a temp job at Happy Time Temp Agency, George is met with a truly tragic end: death by toilet seat when the planned decommissioning of a Russian space station goes horribly awry. But instead of going to the afterlife, George is informed she has a new job as a grim reaper. Her task is to remove the souls of people on the verge of a violent death and then escort them until they are ready to move on to the afterlife. George reluctantly accepts her new role. In the process, she finds a new family of fellow reapers, including her new boss Rube (Mandy Patinkin in what should have been an award-winning performance).
Despite Fuller parting ways with Dead Like Me after just five episodes — a departure he attributed to creative differences with MGM TV — his signature style is evident in the show’s concept and exploration of challenging subjects, such as broken families and grief. In typical Fuller fashion, his exploration often has a whimsical, campy sense to it. While dark robes and a scythe feature heavily in the marketing of the show, Fuller flips the concept of death on its head by making George, a young teen, the face of his story. She chews bubblegum, she’s not afraid to give her victims a hard time, and she’s got a sense of naivety that defies our perception of what death should look like.
Fuller loves to challenge his audience’s expectations, and Dead Like Me finds both humor and humanity in a figure we’re conditioned to fear.
Dead Like Me also popped up in Fuller’s later work. Muth appears in Fuller’s magnum opus, Hannibal, this time under the name Georgia Madchen. Like in Dead Like Me, Georgia straddled the line between life and death due to her character’s condition of Cotard’s syndrome, a delusion disorder that had her convinced she was dead. Fuller may have walked out on his first-ever TV series, but it’s clear his time working on the show affected him to the point that he returned to it a decade later.
And while it would take years for Fuller to perfect the stylish horror associated with Hannibal, Dead Like Me is a vital peek into what he likes to show an audience. His tongue-in-cheek humor, the carefully constructed Rube Goldberg-style death scenes (one early episode involves a bank robbery and a banana peel), and the nerve to make fun of tragedy and horror, is what make Dead Like Me a must-watch for any fan interested in the ever-growing Fullerverse.