Pushing Daisies

Love is forever. Death — eh, it depends. As a boy, Ned (Lee Pace, right) discovers that he can revive dead people (and dogs and flies) by touching them. There are two catches: if they stay alive more than a minute, someone else dies in their stead, and if he touches them again, they die again — permanently. Ned grows into a shy, touch-averse man, making extra cash by asking murder victims who killed them, then re-icing them and collecting the reward. When one victim turns out to be his boyhood love, Chuck (Anna Friel), Ned can't bring himself to re-kill her. And he can never touch her again.

Pushing Daisies (ABC; Wednesdays, 8 p.m. E.T.) comes trailing the kind of descriptives — quirky, unique and, yikes, critically praised — that usually spell cancellation. So why is it getting pegged as the fall's biggest potential hit? Perhaps because at heart it's a fairy tale for grownups. Ned is a boy-man with a Midas curse; Chuck, a Sleeping Beauty who died trying to escape a stultifying life. The script from Bryan Fuller (Wonderfalls) is nimble and instantly charming, and director-producer Barry Sonnenfeld (Men in Black) bathes it in fanciful saturated colors, with over-the-top sets out of a Tim Burton yard sale. Wry and winsome, Daisies may turn out to have the touch of life.

— JAMES PONIEWOZIK