'It Is About Family & Finding The Fun In Aging': Writer & Producer Sam Strauss On Showtime's 'The End'

(CBS Local)-- Have you ever thought about the end of your life? Writer and producer Sam Strauss has thought a lot about this and her new Showtime dark comedy called "The End" explores how three generations of a family are trying to figure how to live with meaning, die with dignity and the beauty that occurs in between.

This is a big moment for the Australian writer Strauss who also got the opportunity to work on Hulu's new series coming out in August called "Nine Perfect Strangers" with Nicole Kidman, Melissa McCarthy and Michael Shannon. CBS Local's DJ Sixsmith recently chatted with Strauss about "The End," how a project she wrote at 19 years ago turned into this series and what it was like to work with Harriet Walker.

"We are really proud to have taken an Australian story to America," said Strauss. "That's a bit of a dream and it is coming at an interesting time because a lot of the show is about death and how we look after our loved ones as they die. A lot of Americans have just experienced that. I think our series has a really hopeful heart underneath it and it is really all about family and finding the fun in aging. I hope it find an audience and people who love it as much as we do."

The first four episodes of the series are already available on the Showtime app. While aging and the end of life are not necessarily topics that people love to talk about, Strauss' show uses dark humor to get into these conversations between family members in a really interesting way.

"I wrote this series because I was inspired by a personal story of a grandmother who had a sort of flowering at the end of her life," said Strauss. "She had only ever been a wife, or a daughter, or a mother. She had never been single and when she was single in her 80's after her husband had died, she had this new lease on life. It really inspired me because you can make all these mistakes and maybe if you get it right at the end, you can find a way to have some fun, make some new friends and discover who you are. at your deepest core. To me, that is a life worth lived. That was what was really important to me, to always have that optimistic heart. We wanted to show the assisted dying debate from all the different angles."

Watch "The End" on Showtime and stream anytime on the Showtime app.