Ray Martin, The Last Goodbye, SBS review: death becomes us

Ray Martin’s latest series for SBS opens with some cheery news: ‘The next decade will see more deaths than any other time in Australia – we’re about to reach peak death.’

Considering Martin has just climbed out of a coffin to deliver this news, you’d be forgiven for thinking you’d tuned into an extremely early Halloween special. But no: he’s on a mission to get us all thinking about funerals and what happens to us – well, our bodies at least – after we die.

The action here starts when your vital signs finish. This isn’t a series about death as such; there’s no lingering waits in hospital rooms or out-of-nowhere phone calls after an accident. We head straight for the morgue and go from there. As Martin points out, there’s an Australian dying every three minutes. ‘It’s a pretty lively business.’

Starting with a look at how we’ve distanced ourselves from death over the last century or so and a course designed to bring doctors up to speed with ‘death down under’ (seems we’re not as religious as a lot of other cultures), the series moves through both the mechanical and the cultural side of what happens after life.

ScreenHub: Ray Martin is not dead yet …

Disposing of the body is one thing – whether burial, cremation, or being turned into compost – but what if you’re committed to living forever? People are still having their corpses frozen in the hope of being thawed out for eternal life at Holbrook in regional NSW. (just don’t look into what happens if the company minding your body goes bust).

There’s also those with different cultural perspectives from the typical just-get-it-done Australian take. For those with one foot in the Mexican camp, that cultures focus on death provides them with tools to deal with what is a painful time; for those looking to go out Viking-style, it’s a way to celebrate a connection with a set of values – and be buried with a bunch of swords and axes.

The viking funeral is also interesting because it involves someone whose terminal cancer qualifies them for assisted dying under Victoria’s laws – they get to choose how they want to go. For their father, it’s clearly a rough situation knowing his son will (barring accidents) die before him. And while this series largely focuses on the more abstract aspects of the Australian way of death, the fact that each death is a devastating event to those losing a loved one keeps on creeping in.

The structure of this series isn’t going to startle anyone who’s even slightly familiar with television documentary series. Martin travels a lot, chats to many (often quirky or distinctive) people, and provides a wide overview of a lot of perspectives on a subject that will affect all of us. But for once the lightweight approach is the way to go: you don’t need to get serious when your subject matter is death, and the occasional lightweight moments are just enough to take the edge off without undercutting the underlying point.

Martin is as charming and engaged as always, and with only a few years left on the clock (statistically speaking at least), the 78 year-old is perfectly positioned to be our guide. Many of this three-part series’ most affecting moments are the ones where he’s forced to confront the fact that all this exploration isn’t just a hypothetical. Early on he says, ‘I don’t know how people accept death’; part of the learning curve here is realising that death’s coming whether we accept it or not.

Insightful, informative, thought-provoking and occasionally (intentionally) funny, it’s essential viewing for anyone who suspects they might not be immortal after all.

Ray Martin: The Last Goodbye premieres on 14 August at 8.30pm on SBS and SBS On Demand. Watch the trailer.