Pushing Daisies

Our Review

Bryan Fuller’s technicolor masterpiece — a fairy-tale procedural about a pie-maker who can bring the dead back to life with a touch, but a second touch kills them forever. Ned revives his childhood sweetheart Chuck; they fall in love; they can never touch. That’s the show’s gorgeous, agonizing engine: romance conducted through plastic wrap and simulated kisses, narrated by Jim Dale in the greatest voiceover performance in TV history.

It’s the most visually lavish show of its era — saturated primaries, production design like a storybook exploded — and the murder mysteries (Ned revives the victim, asks who killed them, re-kills them in sixty seconds) are a perfect weekly hook. Chi McBride’s gruff PI Emerson Cod and Kristin Chenoweth’s lovelorn Olive are elite support. Killed by the writers’ strike and ABC’s indifference after two abbreviated seasons; the ending is rushed but the show remains the fullest realization of Fuller’s death-romanticism.

Verdict: Watch it. The most beautiful show ever canceled too soon.