The Fabulous Funeral Parlour review – the moving tale of the female taboo buster shaking up the death industry

‘We don’t do it in a traditional way’ … funeral director Hayley McCaughran in The Fabulous Funeral Parlour. Photograph: Channel 4

When it comes to funerals, we tend to cling to the solemn and the tasteful. We hate to think about death, so we cordon it off from all recognisable signs of life – particularly warmth and comedy. Enter Butterflies Rising Funeral Care, the subject of new Channel 4 documentary The Fabulous Funeral Parlour, which is shaking things up.

Our introduction to this funeral home, founded by Liverpudlian Hayley McCaughran, is seeing a casket with a gold plaque that reads “FUCK OFF”. McCaughran tells us that when making nameplates they always ask families whether the deceased had a favourite saying: “We don’t do it a traditional way.”