Pushing Daisies, season 1

Can you spell "quirky"? It seems to be Bryan Fuller's favourite. The man has recently gotten tons of attention for being brought back on the way-past-limping Heroes where he has previously contributed by among other things penning the episode Company Man in the first season – the one episode of the entire show that I'd like to own on DVD. What's maybe gotten a little less attention is what he's been doing while he's been away from Heroes – and it is, unsurprisingly, a cute and quirky little show.

There is something about Fuller's shows that makes "cute and quirky little show" seem like a suitable description on all of them. Dead Like Me – which he created and then left after quarreling with the studio – is by far the weakest one of them (due to Fuller's absence, mayhaps?) but it, too, is decidedly quirky. Thinking back on it, in fact, it occurs to me that the pilot and base concept presented in it was much quirkier than the rest of the show ever was… Fuller is definitely a writer with a fascination for the odd and unexpected. The other (perhaps slightly more well-known?) show of his was Wonderfalls, which only got one shortened season, but where Fuller at least stayed on. And so, I must say, did the quirky. I'm no big fan of Dead Like Me, but I quite enjoy Wonderfalls. (And I LOVE Company Man, the memory of it being the only reason I'm still putting up with Heroes) My expectations, thus, to his third quirky little show were as mixed as they get. And I say "little" even though it was nominated for twelve and won three Emmy Awards. Because it's just so cute, you can't think of it as anything else. If this show had gotten ten seasons, it'd still be a cute and quirky little thing.

So what was this show? Well, as this post's title has long since given away, it was called Pushing Daisies, and its cancellation is what has brought Fuller back on Heroes. The second season is still ongoing, being on a Christmas hiatus before airing its final three episodes, but the first, stumped by the writer's strike, ended this spring, and I've recently caught up on it. While shorter than it should have been, I must say the season holds up well despite the premature ending.

The show's base concept is just as odd as on the other two shows: Ned, a pie-maker and part-time assisting private investigator, has a unique talent. When he touches someone, or something, that is dead, if comes back to life. If he touches it again, it dies, for good. And if he leaves it alive for more than a minute, something else in the vicinity of approximately the same strength of life-force dies in a poof of cosmic balancing. His part-time P.I.'ing is a result of this, as the eminent Emerson Cod, private eye, discovers Ned's talent, and makes use of him to have one-minute-interviews with murder-victims – thus easily catching killers and claiming rewards. The duo becomes a trio, however, when the murder-victim turns out to be Ned's childhood sweetheart, and he doesn't manage to bring himself to put her back out before her minute is up. The cast is rounded off with Olive Snook, Ned's employee at The Pie Hole who is head over heels in love with him, but unaware of his secret powers.

Now, with the other two shows, most of the oddness ended there. Not so with Pushing Daisies. The entire shape of the show is purposefully strange: filled with bright colours, a calm, British narrator's voice with an obsession of exact numbers and times, and taking place in a world that's an odd blend of the present day and the 1950's. Two inspirations strike me as very obvious – anything by Tim Burton, and Amélie[/url]. The show is borrowing heavily from both, in homages sometimes subtle and sometimes obvious. The strange thing, I'm not a big fan of neither Burton nor the somewhat too artsy Amélie, but I really, really liked this show. The blend of Fuller's quirky humour with the larger-than-life look and feel of the show makes for a lovely little fairy-tale land that feels both real and fantastic at the same time. Think of some of the intense, powerful scenes of Jackson's The Fellowship of the Ring. Didn't those just make the fantastical seem awfully real? Pushing Daisies does just the opposite, making the real seem awfully fantastical. And I quite like it.

The characters are lovable, to a one. My personal favourite would no doubt be Mr. Cod, but every single character is amazing. The loving relationship that develops between Ned and his untouchable childhood sweetheart is possibly the sweetest romance I've ever seen depicted on screen – all the more so for their inability to ever touch each other. The cases of the week are usually quite interesting and always quite absurd. The dialogue is wonderful.

This is one of the strongest recent shows I've seen, and while it's not quite enough up my alley (no wizards, no dragons, no politics, no intrigue, and no Darth Vader!) to be a show I'll ever wholeheartedly love, if this is your thing, I can promise you that you'll do just that. And even if it's not, I cannot see how you can do anything but enjoy this colourful festivity of a TV-show. It's touching, funny, pretty, engaging and sometimes even sad. But most of all, it's a cute and quirky little thing created by Bryan Fuller.

Which is probably why it's so good.