Cinefantastique Online

It seems this season will be filled with genre television shows. NBC’s BIONIC WOMAN made its debut on Tuesday. Tonight we have the return of CBS’s GHOST WHISPERER at 8:00pm, followed by the vampiric MOONLIGHT at 9:00pm. But according to Variety, the show we really should be anticipating is PUSHING DAISIES, which plants its first seed on Wednesday, October 3:

Standing head and shoulders above this fall’s other seedlings, “Pushing Daisies” is whimsical, romantic, funny and visually distinctive — such a delicate mix of ingredients, frankly, you fear for its longevity in the cold, cruel world of primetime. The producers are seeking to offset that fragility by incorporating a procedural element into this tale of love and death, but that only invites skepticism the souffle will collapse by episode four or five. Such commercial considerations, however, shouldn’t detract from this beguiling pilot, and credit ABC with taking the season’s boldest leap in hoping that love conquers all.

Director Barry Sonnenfeld has already winced at comparisons to Tim Burton, but given the exploding color scheme and fairy-tale trappings (including narration by Jim Dale, reader of the “Harry Potter” books on tape), they’re all but unavoidable, and in a good way.

Series creator Bryan Fuller previously explored the great beyond in “Dead Like Me,” but this is a far more impressive construct, built around Ned (Lee Pace), who discovers at an early age that he possesses the power to bring the dead back to life with a single touch.

The tradeoff: If he touches that person again, they die forever — and leaving the resurrected alive causes someone else in the vicinity to drop dead, achieving a weird kind of cosmic balance.

Ned has found a way to eke out a living from this talent on two fronts: His dazzling pies, where his touch invests the fruit with tremendous flavor; and moonlighting with a detective (Chi McBride) who inadvertently witnessed his gift first-hand, reviving murder victims long enough to find out who killed them and split the reward. Still, it’s a detached, emotionally frigid existence, as his coworker Olive (the ever-adorable Kristin Chenoweth) points out.