If you’ve been reading this site (or me in particular) for a little while, then you know my tastes run all over the place. If the work is engaging, I’m going along for the ride; if not, well, to paraphrase (and slightly twist) Anton Ego from Brad Bird’s Ratatouille, “I don’t like this genre, I love it. If I don’t love it, I don’t swallow.”
Luckily for me, there’s plenty out there to love, especially ABC’s Pushing Daisies! Featuring a Pie Maker with a magical touch and his pie shop, The Pie Hole, rest assured I am swallowing everything this show is dishing out!
Sometimes I don’t even bother to chew.
So it is with great great pleasure that I present to you a couple sneak peeks at the upcoming premier episode of the show, the first of which, can be found below:
More after the jump…
Ahh…it’s like a breath of fresh air isn’t it? The strength of this show lies in its characters. Would you like a quick catch up?
Okay.
You have Ned the Pie Maker who has the power to bring the dead back, but he can only do this once and only for a minute (or someone else will have to die to take their place); after that, the deceased stay deceased. He accomplishes all of this through touch. One touch and your back, next touch and it’s RIP all over again.
There’s Charlotte (aka “Chuck”) who is (or was) dead, however the Pie Maker, who had always had a soft spot for Chuck, broke his one-minute rule to keep her with him. They’re very much in love, except they can never touch, because, well, see the above explanation about Ned.
The fantastic Chi McBride plays Emerson Cod, a deadpan police investigator who uses Ned’s abilities to get first hand information from the deceased. The time limit means he has to choose his questions carefully and often isn’t able to get all the information he’d like. Poor guy.
And finally we have Olive Snook (featured in the video below) who’s unrequited love for the Pie Maker makes for some odd and funny moments as she and Chuck and Ned are all employed together in both pies and murder investigations. Olive also ends up carrying around a bushel of everyone else’s secrets which makes her, well, just check out the video below.
If that narrator sounds familiar, it’s because it’s multiple award winning narrator-extraordinaire Jim Dale, who does what he always does – nails every voice over in the show and nearly manages, without actually appearing, to steal scenes.
This is easily one of the best shows going right now. I put it in with Eureka as my favorite current SciFi/Fantasy television series and can’t tell you how excited I am to have this show coming back.
So get ready, stay home, and enjoy the warm-pie goodness that is Pushing Daisies. Mmmm…it’s so good to have you back my pie baking, murder solving, dead re-animating, wise-cracking, whimsical friends.
FYI – if you haven’t checked out Pushing Daisies, or if you need to catch up on some episodes, ABC offers the chance to watch from their website – just click here to watch online. Ain’t internet livin’ grand?
Thanks for posting this! I’m a big fan of the show, and hope it sticks around a long time!