The Undertaking, PBS Frontline’s look into the lives and work of Lynch & Sons Funeral Directors of Oakland County, Michigan has been nominated in the 29th Annual Emmy Awards for News and Documentary. The nominations were announced on July 15th and final judging will take place on September 21, 2008. The Undertaking is one of four nominees in the Outstanding Arts and Culture Programming category.
Produced and directed by Miri Navasky and Karen O’Connor and adapted from the book by the same name by Thomas Lynch, The Undertaking was filmed at Lynch & Sons Funeral Homes in Milford and Clawson, Michigan, between January and June of 2007. It aired on PBS stations nationwide in late October last year.
The film, which followed several families through the process of terminal illness, decisions about funerals, burials, cremations and into the early months of bereavement, was very favorably reviewed in the national press at the time of broadcast. Nearly everyone in Mr. Lynch’s family is involved in the funeral business: brothers and sisters, nieces and nephews. What you’re left inferring from “Frontline” is that this is hardly the consequence of impoverished professional opportunity, but rather is the result of a collective commitment to making the experience of death not merely easier but also more meaningful for the surviving. For the Lynches, funeral directing is not a job, it is a profession…“The Undertaking,” a memoir of his experiences at Lynch & Sons Funeral Directors, forms the basis of (the) documentary…, and if there is a single trite sentiment in it — about grief, dying, disease, resignation, faith, consolation — it eluded me. So wrote Ginia Bellafante in The New York Times.
“We’re very pleased,” says Patrick Lynch of Lynch & Sons. “The Emmy nomination honors the art and eloquence of filmmakers Karen O’Connor, Miri Navasky, and the rest of the Frontline crew. And it honors the gift of those grieving families that allowed a look into their lives at the most difficult times. And of course, our family is honored and humbled to have been part of such an important project.”
The Undertaking can be seen in its entirety online at PBS Frontline’s site at www.pbs.org/frontline/undertaking.