Not content with exploring what happens when a woman named Emily visits Paris or what happens when a queen has a gambit, Netflix is setting its sights on a topic that is far more existential: what happens after we die?

In contrast to my goofy introductory paragraph, Surviving Death, a new six-episode series coming to the streamer this week, is a deadly serious show that looks to engage with one of mankind’s biggest questions through research and first-hand accounts with people who have died and come back to life. Check out the trailer below.

Surviving Death Trailer

As the trailer mentions, the idea of what happens to us after death has been a question that humankind has pondered since its earliest days. In an age in which the entirety of the knowledge our species has accumulated is accessible at our fingertips, unanswered questions like this can sometimes feel like an itch that’s desperately calling out to be scratched.

Not every question has an answer – or at least, not a knowable one. But damn it, director Ricki Stern is going to try to get to the bottom of that age-old mystery in six episodes, speaking with people who have briefly died and then were resuscitated and others who provide cutting-edge new research into the subject. Will the show offer up any significant, groundbreaking conclusions? Is this another step in Netflix’s attempt to expand its programming to become a streaming service that provides all things to all people? Are the answers to those two questions mutually exclusive? We’ll find out very soon, since the show premieres later this week. It’d be cool if 2021 kicked off by providing a definitive answer to a question humanity has been puzzled by for millennia, so…fingers crossed?

Here’s the show’s official synopsis:

From director and executive producer, Ricki Stern (Reversing Roe, Joan Rivers: A Piece of Work), and based on best-selling author and journalist Leslie Kean’s book, Surviving Deathis an in-depth investigative series exploring the possibility of an afterlife. Over six episodes, Surviving Death explores questions that have been contemplated throughout time: What does it mean to die, and is death the end of our existence? Weaving together innovative new research with firsthand accounts from those who’ve been close to — and even experienced — death, the series takes viewers on an extraordinary journey into a world beyond human existence as we know it.

Surviving Death drops on Netflix on January 6, 2021.

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