Pushing Daisies
Cast & Key People
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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, rekills 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.
