Chronicle of a death foretold

BBC2 is back on the taboo trail again. After an in-depth exploration of mental health issues in the "States of Mind" season, it has turned its attention to one of the fundamental facts of life: death, in the six-part series, The Long Goodbye.

The focus of these programmes is death from a celebrity perspective, using famous people's experiences to tackle another subject that people don't like to think about: "the universal truth that everyone is going to die". Actress Zoe Wanamaker has already discussed the death of her father, Sam, and today (5.40pm BBC2) Chilean author Isabel Allende talks about the premature death of her daughter, Paula.

Avid readers of Allende's novels find themselves caught up in the strong supernatural dimension of her work. House of Spirits, written five years before Paula's death in 1992, is full of premonition, death, grieving, and... spirits. Early on in the book, the del Valle's beautiful young daughter, Rosa dies, by mistake, but not before other characters have had premonitions of her passing. So you're drawn by morbid fascination to learn of Isabel Allende's dream and Paula's own premonition of her death, as well as how the writer copes with genuine grief.

As for facing up to our own mortality, however, we may acknowledge that "the readiness is all", but there are still those of us who can only bear to take life one day at a time.