A Review of HBO’s The Mortician: The Good, The Bad, and The Unimaginable

(The views in this piece are my own personal opinions and observations and do not necessarily represent those of Connecting Directors or the good people behind it.)

When it comes to HBO’s recent documentary The Mortician, most funeral service professionals probably fell into one of two categories: those who refused to watch it because David Sconce is a horrible person and the worst possible representative of the industry, and those who watched to see exactly how deathcare was portrayed and prepare themselves for the inevitable questions from the curious. 

If you’re part of the last category, you weren’t the only one tuning in, popcorn ready, for those three Sunday night episodes. It turns out that a lot of people wanted to know just how bad the Sconce criminality could get — so many that The Mortician became HBO’s most-watched documentary in the last five years. I was among those 2.6 million record-breaking viewers, and here’s my personal take on the series as it relates to you, our extremely appreciated readers.

We’ll start with the Good

Yes, I did manage to find some small bits of light amid the dark, dark, scenes of disturbing greed and inhumanity. In my humble opinion, the crimes and indiscretions committed by David Sconce and enabled by his parents and employees were so extreme and so unspeakable — just so “out there” — that his story has to be an anomaly. Yes, it was a true story, and yes, Sconce eagerly owned up to his sick deeds and twisted motivations. I simply can’t fathom that a normal human being can watch this tale unravel and believe that the majority of other funeral professionals (or any person with a conscience, for that matter) could ever conceive of such actions. Again … just my opinion. 

Another much appreciated aspect of the documentary was the rational input of real deathcare pros, from a mortuary school instructor to actual competitors of the Sconce’s Lamb Funeral Home in Pasadena, California. These individuals represented what families want to see in their funeral directors and those who will be handling the remains of their loved ones, respectfully and ethically.

Lastly, the documentary clearly communicated that things changed in the industry after Sconce was found out in 1987 and convicted in 1989. Laws were enacted and regulations put in place for strict oversight and to prevent similar tragedies from befalling innocent families again  … which leads me to the next section of this review.

There was some Bad

Those 2.6 million normal human beings who watched The Mortician probably did what most of us do today when engrossed in a new story — Googled to find out more. And that might have led them to not-so-dissimilar stories of bad actors in recent history like the Hallfords of Colorado’s Return to Nature, for example. Like Sconce, the husband-and-wife green funeral home owners seemed to be driven by greed and a total disrespect for human remains. Hopefully, “the Google” also told these internet sleuths that even more laws have been enacted to keep people like the Hallfords and the small handful of bad guys out of the industry and unable to hurt more families.

Another (kind of) bad thing that actually wasn’t in the documentary, but definitely took advantage of its popularity, is an event that popped up in my own Google search. On June 14, a group held an “interactive murder mystery experience” at the “historic” 1920s Pasadena building that was formerly Sconce’s Lamb Funeral Home. The building also serves as the backdrop for an escape room activity called “Missing at the Mortuary.” Ugh … it’s just so gross.

But it was mostly Ugly … or in this case, Unimaginable

Let’s face it — The Mortician had all the expected titillating elements of today’s must-watch true-crime docs, and maybe more. It had murder (allegedly), greed (obviously), ex-cons, mobsters, money, the family-falling-from-grace storyline, broken marriages, college football players, poison, lots of drugs, veiled confessions to even more crimes (cliffhanger style), and of course, the shadowy participant who didn’t want their face revealed. 

Worst of all were the families who found out the remains they cherished probably weren’t those of their loved ones. They learned that the people handling the bodies weren’t professionals at all, but sketchy figures who practiced ineptly, unethically, and without one bit of remorse or discretion. They also learned that they entrusted their loved one to a sociopath who didn’t seem one bit sorry for what he’d done. Even prison and a $15.4 million settlement with his victims’ families didn’t give him a glimmer of a soul — and the last few moments of the documentary proved that, without a doubt.

The one question I wish they had asked

In that final episode viewers heard Sconce tearfully relate the deaths of two of his grandparents. Yes, I said tearfully. His near-humanity was astonishing, to be honest, and stood in stark contrast to the benign, almost jovial way Sconce discussed all of the atrocities and crimes he had committed. 

I wish the interviewer had stopped him right there and asked this man, who openly stated in The Mortician that, “I don’t put any value in anybody after they’re gone and dead” and “people just got to be more in control of their emotions,” why the tears, or, more directly, how he would feel if his two beloved grandparents had been shoved in a cremation furnace with 10 other strangers? One has to wonder.

Here’s what this article in Deadline says of the recent HBO series “The Mortician”:  “The three-part documentary series, which chronicles the inhumane practices at a funeral home in Southern California, debuted on June 1. Since then, the show has tallied more than 2.6M cross-platform viewers in the U.S., per the network.  It’s now the most-watched HBO documentary series in over five years.”

Here’s another quote from the Deadline article, “Featuring an exclusive interview with (David) Sconce, newly released from prison, the series examines the lucrative and ubiquitous multibillion-dollar mortuary industry and illuminates what can happen behind closed doors, away from public scrutiny. With emotional interviews with families of the victims of the Lamb Funeral Home and revelations from former employees, The Mortician unravels a dark, troubling story that involved mass cremations and stealing from the dead in a multitude of macabre ways. “

Funeral Director Daily take:  I watched all three parts of the series and would argue that this type of publicity for the Death Care profession is not good.  It struck me in two separate ways — first of all I thought of some of my childhood lessons from my parents, teachers, and other mentors about “doing things the right way”.  It appeared to me that once members of the greater Lamb family from the funeral home took shortcuts it was much easier to take bigger shortcuts and deprive client families the sacred trust that they put in the funeral home.

That lesson is “take the time to always do things right”. . . . .because once you don’t it is simply easier and easier to simply “do things easy” not necessarily correct.

The second lesson that I took from watching the series was if you know something is wrong “Stop it” because continuing to do the improper procedures will just spin out of control and be harder to stop in the future.

The Lamb/Sconce family had more than one person found guilty in their operation of the funeral home/crematory so a jury found them culpable.  It was truly a bad episode of Death Care for the greater Los Angeles area and, as seen in the documentary, there are still people suffering from the dishonesty of that mortuary 45 years later.

Couldn’t figure it out —  I reached out to a colleague of whom I knew was in business in Los Angeles in the Lamb Funeral Home time period.  He told me that his staff was aware of the great volume of cremations that the Lamb Funeral Home was doing at a low, low price of $55 per cremation and they could not figure out how they could be profitable.  The arrests, convictions, and documentary now show how.

What’s the “Relevance” of 2.6 million viewers? —  Well, the United States has a population of about 340 million people, so while 2.6 million viewers sounds big, it is less than 1% of the total population of the United States.  The Deadline article says the viewership “beat out some high profile documentaries like Pee-wee as Himself, Chimp Crazy, Love Has Won: The Cult of Mother God.”  

The good news is that those titles are not “Top of Mind” for me. . . . .and “The Mortician” is  not being compared to the viewership of Titanic, The Wizard of Oz, Lord of the Rings – The Return of the King, The Lion King, or Jurassic Park — whom IMBD states are the “Most Viewed” movies in history.

Here’s a couple more comparisons:

• “The Burial” — Last year’s Amazon Prime movie about funeral provider The Loewen Group and their downfall, was rated by “watch time minutes” and not viewership.  However, if you use the minutes viewed it would equal to a total cross platform viewership of about 5 million at this point in time — almost double the viewership of “The Mortician”.

• The “Wheel of Fortune“, America’s top game show rated by viewership has between 7.9 and 8.3 million viewers per episode.

• The 2025 Super Bowl featuring the Chiefs vs. the Eagles had a cross-platform viewship of about 127.7 million views — about 37% of the American population.

So, in the long run, I would argue that “The Mortician” was not a great promotion for Death Care.  However, there were lessons to be learned and the good news included that not a great deal of the public saw the series and the unscrupulous behavior of an uncommonly sinister family group of funeral home owners.

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