Death didn't become "Six Feet Under" in its season debut quite the same way it has in the past.

The series opened its fourth season on HBO Sunday (June 13) after just over a year off, but audiences greeted the return with a relative shrug. The season finale of "Deadwood" also took a hit without a "Sopranos" lead-in for the first time.

"Six Feet Under" drew 4.16 million viewers in its premiere, down about a million viewers from the third-season opener in March 2003. The show hovered around the 5-million-viewer mark for most of last season.

Ratings for the episode also put "Six Feet" well behind the most recent season premieres of HBO favorites "The Sopranos" (12.1 million viewers) and "Sex and the City" (6.4 million).

Some of the decline can be attributed to a change in the way Nielsen counts HBO's audience. In the past, the ratings service included anyone who was watching another HBO network, such as HBO2 or HBO Signature, at the same time as, say, "Six Feet Under" in the show's audience. The "multiplex" channels are now counted separately.

"Six Feet" also faced stiff competition from Game 4 of the NBA Finals on ABC, which drew Sunday's biggest audience -- 20.3 million people.

Similarly, the first season of "Deadwood" closed on a low note, drawing just over 3.2 million people to its finale following the "Six Feet Under" premiere. The profane, highly praised western had pulled in between 4 million and 5 million viewers for most of its run this spring.