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West Hollywood's W Hotel is under siege. It's the night of The Soul Train Awards, and with the after-show party being held here, the already pretty-damn comfy surrounds are being polished and pillow-fluffed into a state of extreme and highly conspicuous bling. Oh, and - if the rumours floating around the ganja-perfumed upper-floor corridors are to be believed - Mariah Carey's going to turn up! It's all a very big deal, apparently, and no one's about to argue with the various Crews, Posses and 280lb Security-Gorillas lining the hotel walls.

Curiously enough, though, the biggest buzz in the hotel is being created by the recent arrival of a bunch of predominantly white actors from a US cable show. Of course, Hollywood buzz is a discreet beast, way too cool to point at celebrities, opting instead for a noncholant lowering of the shades, then finding something bad to say about that person's outfit. Which makes it all the more odd when a lone voice shouts out "Yo! Hey! You the toe-girl, right?"

Six Feet Under's Lauren Ambrose (the flame-haired, toe-sucking Clare Fisher) acknowledges the bigging up with an awkward "Huh?" grin and promptly tries to hide herself among the other cast-members. Yep, forget the Carey woman, everyone's unapologetic flavour of the moment is HBO's Six Feet Under, and when the actors hit town, LA, like, totally loses its cool.

Six Feet Under is arguably American's most respected and proudest hour in decades, some would go as far as to say ever. The less-than-likely premise of a family-drama set in a funeral home (casually blending domestic and professional affairs by uncemeroniously bumping off the patriarch in the pilot episode's opening five minutes) has wormed it way into the consciousness of a people who - post 9/11 - have just had their sternest lesson in facing up to their own mortality. At a time like this, then, a show all about death was either going to be a disastrous and distasteful miscalculation of public appetite or just what the world needed.

That the cast are currently working on their third season (with at least one more to come) shows just how right Alan Ball (Six Feet Under's creator, writer of American Beauty and universally acknowledged scripting genius) managed to get it. And surprise surprise, the show which used coffins, mortuary slabs and embalming fluid as props turned out to be not so much about death, as an honest, curiously affirming celebration of what goes on before we meet our maker. Not the cosy, large-print hearts-and-flowers version of life peddled by the Ballykissangels and Heartbeats of this world, but the 'Shit happens. Deal with it.' reality that normal, sentient beings wake up to on a daily basis.

US cable station (and dependable purveyor of challenging, quality TV) HBO have seen the kind of ratings that give executives hard-ons, then, while America has found an export product to be truly proud of. Lucky old us, then, being allowed to barge in to the ambassadorial throng and drag away Michael C Hall (David Fisher) and Matthew St Patrick (Keith Charles), the show's far-from-token gay couple. David was - back at the start of the first series - your average suburban closeted homo, poised to take his first dive into Lake Homo while Keith - being big, black, openly gay and a cop - was a porn-director's dream made flesh. They came together, they fell in love, they fell out of love, they muddled their way as best they could through the unregulated, "Erm, what do we do next?" minefield that is The First Relationship, but they did it convincingly, without cute gags about shopping and fashion, they actually got the viewer - irresepctive of orientation - to care. And even if they did get the love thing wrong, they got the scary complexity of the whole business so very right.

Poster-boys for gay relationships, then? The idea causes Hall to squirm slightly, although he's certainly noticed the public's enthusiasm for his character's ongoing trials and tribulations. "People approached me during the first season, and for the most part they'd be saying 'When are you guys going to get back together? You're so great together!' But over the course of season two," he adds, grinning, "it was all 'Oh please, when are you two guys going to break up already?' Season two changes everything with those two, believe me."

St Patrick leans forward to add his tuppence-worth. An already-imposing figure onscreen, he's bulked up a bit (for the part, we hasten to add), is sporting a not-unappealing 5 O'Clock shadow (ditto), and is sprawled across the sofa like a huge, cuddly, human cushion of snuggly loveliness, he really is. If he's noticed that I just fell in love with him, he's far too polite to comment, but you learn very quickly with St Patrick that he's not one to waste breath on unnecessary comment.

"As far as people recognising David and Keith's relationship as some kind of 'example' goes," he volunteers, "I think it qualifies as a good example of a good relationship period. And that's what's so wonderful about it, and what's allowed viewers to get on board. Just as they are in real life, our relationship has been a rollercoaster. You know, we struggle with feelings, with the whole idea of togetherness, but there's also the anxiety about the position you've placed yourself in. You know, the whole 'Does he really love me? Does he really get me? Is he the person that I think I know, and is he going to be the person that I need him to be?' thing."

All familiar worries, and - without revealing too much of the series' ins and outs - ones that are dealt with deliciously in season two. There's the 'I'm not actually moving in, but I'm bringing a bag of my stuff over' thing, the 'Are we having sex tonight?' thing, the 'I HATE YOU SO MUCH RIGHT NOW' thing. And when Keith turns to David and asks "What do you know about relationships, anyway?", David's reply ("Plenty. I watch television") is one of the most forgiveable pieces of smart-arse self-referential irony ever uttered on the small screen.

It's the refusal of creator and writer Alan Ball to dip into The Big Bag Of Hollywood Gay Cliches that has, more than anything, resonated with the gay community. "I think there's a real appreciation for the fact that David isn't, like… fabulous. He's not incidentally gay, he's not the oh-so-understanding neighbour with a cute little dog. But then - and it may be a sign that dramatic roles have improved - there seems to be less criticism on the grounds of 'representation' these days. I think it's fair to say that David is ultimately not a representative, but one fully-fledged, complex human being."

St Patrick nods in agreement. "It's one of the many fascinating aspect of this show, the fact that we appeal across the cultures as well as age-groups. But when you think about it, anyone who has any kind of real feelings, who has any kind of interest in real life and how we live and feel, well, they'll find something in the show that resonates. We're all the same, ultimately: we have things that motivate us, things that scare the shit out of us, we want to care, we want to be loved, we all hurt, and very deeply at times. Six Feet Under just gets all of that across without any of the usual large-print cliches."

We're joined, briefly, by the show's female figurehead, Rachel Griffiths (Brenad Chenowith). Maybe not the quadruple-figure IQ equal of her child-prodigy-grown-up-funny character, Griffiths is nonetheless a sharp piece of work, with eyes that don't so much betray the fury of thought processes taking place behind them, as throw out skin-tingling sparks of mental activity. We like Rachel Griffiths a lot. And not just because she once streaked through a Melbourne casino, protesting against the local government's massaging of gambling laws. "Well I had to do something," she grins. "The whole 'performance art' bit of it though wasn't so much the fact that I streaked, but that I was dressed as Jesus Christ in a loin cloth and a crown of thorns. It was a play on Jesus going nuts in the market place."

Plumping herself down between the two men, she joins in with the ongoing dissection of Keith and David's roles. "There's clearly a great sense of relief from the gay community," she points out. "Well, it's certainly been expressed to me that they're really glad that a gay relationship has become central to a drama series, and that it's so real compared with what's been shown before. It seems to be much more reflective of the average gay man's aspirations and experiences."

Speaking of experiences, in one of the major developments in series two, Griffiths' character - for reasons left to the viewer to explain - embarks on a course of sexual self-discovery which rapidly descends into, well, a voyage of sexual self-destruction. One of the early indications of this arrives in a deliciously wanton scene set in a classy fashion boutique. Idly running her fingers along those thick, shiny rails, Brenda makes eye-contact with a (male) customer, who helps himself to a good feel of her butt. She reciprocates by taking his hand and guiding it round to the front. To her front. Into her front. In terms of cruising skills, this woman could give masterclasses to gay men. "Why thank you," she grins naughtily. "I have to say, that whole thing was something I couldn't connect to on any personal level, and no female friend of mine had ever had that kind of experience. The closest I could get was, well, from talking to gay men who have anonymous sex. And I had such a wide response about why men do that, but in the end I just kind of did it and let the audience fill in the dots."

The talk returns to David and Keith's relationship - specifically whether (for all its reality) it's a good one: whether or not it stands a chance in hell of taking them through another series. Hall does that sharp intake of breath thing before announcing, "I don't actually know that I would encourage David in this relationship. I think he's certainly investing too much of his sense of self-worth in it, as we're all at risk of doing. It's hard," he frowns. "I don't know that I would ultimately discourage him from being with Keith, but there are certainly some things he needs to address."

At my suggestion that Keith needs to possibly lighten up a bit, St Patrick is quick to leap to the defence of his character. "Lighten up? You know, I look at Keith and I see someone who needs some form of anchorage. He's being torn apart at every place that we normally cling to for security: his family issues, his relationship with his mom and dad, his relationship - or lack of - with his sister. I think he'd really like to have more of a relationship with her than just taking her to rehab."

And again at the risk of giving away too much unbroadcast info, Keith loses that crucial porn-star viability when he's suspended from the police force. Typically (and just as uniform-friendly) he takes a job as a security guard, meaning, as St Patrick is quick to point out, "his status in society has dropped dramatically. The guy's struggling with a whole load of things. I know speaking for myself that when I don't have a job to go to every day, I'm a different person to the man I am when I have one."

But St Patrick does have a job now. And it's a very good, very high-profile one. Asked about the whole fame gig, he shrugs wearily. "You can get into that kind of thing if you want to, but you'll find that this cast don't really do that. To be honest, I'm much busier with my free time - I just moved to LA from New York, so I'm spending time decorating my new place. It's been really rewarding - it was completely a shell when I moved in, so I'm still having fun trying to figure out what to do with it."

A discreet finger-across-neck gesture from a time-conscious publicist indicates that our time is up. Before they go all three of them are anxious to know the transmission details for the UK (Griffiths has been reluctant to do much press in her native Australia following a network's decision to shunt Six Feet Under into a middle-of-the-night timeslot). Bless them, they're genuinely proud of the show - almost in a concerned-parent way.

On the way back to the hotel foyer, I get to share a lift with one of the Soul Train party-people, an immense man with a rolling Barry White voice. "Cartier," he introduces himself, "Cartier the porn star." I'm not sure if he expects me to recognise him, much less where from. "So, you here for the party?" he asks. When I explain that I'm not, but was only here to interview some people from Six Feet Under, he lifts his shades and grins at me. "Doo-hoooood!" he beams. "Now that's the gig to get."

Cartier, it seems, knows his shit. (Oh, and Carey was a no-show).

Six Feet Under season two launches on Channel 4, June 1st, 10pm. Season three airs on E4 from September.

• Six Feet Under