At its core, Pushing Daisies is a police procedural with a twist. Monk had a guy with OCD and a myriad of phobias, Psych had an extremely observational guy, and iZombie had... well a zombie who ate the brains of the dead and absorbed their memories. What does Pushing Daisies have? A guy who can resurrect the dead from the touch of his finger, but only for a minute. If he doesn’t touch them again before the minute’s up, someone else in the vicinity dies. Using this gimmick, our loveable pie-maker Ned makes some extra cash working with the deadpan PI, Emerson Cod, to communicate with the dead and solve their murders. All hell breaks loose when Ned resurrects old friend/crush Charlotte (aka Chuck) and DOES NOT touch her again, leading to much of the drama and overarching narrative of the show. Ned and the rest of the gang (including pie-maker apprentice Olive Snook played by Broadway legend Kristin Chenoweth) get wrapped up in Charlotte’s familial life as she narrowly avoids being caught alive by her Aunts. Simultaneously, a romantic relationship blossoms between Charlotte and ol’ Neddy, even though they can’t ever feel each other. There’s a divider whenever they drive together, they kiss with plastic wrap between them, they hold hands using gloves. It’s one of the most *touching* and bittersweet elements of the whole show, and one that's steeped in tragedy. But enough about that nonsense! Pushing Daisies is a tonally paradoxical show that somehow does it so well. It balances the light and dark extremely well. It's quirky and cheerful and yet, a lot of the humour is really quite morbid. Just like in Bryan Fuller's previous work Dead Like Me, the humour comes from the often quite over-the-top deaths of the victims that act as the springboard for the episode’s plot. Unlike Dead Like Me, Pushing Daisies is much more accessible, cohesive, crowd-pleasing, and above all else, utterly gorgeous. The production design, costumes, cinematography, everything really, just pops. An obvious comparison is the filmography of Wes Anderson, who similarly loves bright set design, quirked-up writing, and a feeling of coziness oozing out of the screen, but for my money it’s gotta be Jean-Pierre Jeunet and Marc Caro’s collaborations. Delicatessen, The City of Lost Children, and Jeunet’s solo effort (and beloved classic) Amelie feel like clear cut inspirations for what Fuller is doing here. Amelie especially is the stylistic equivalent of Pushing Daisies, playful, colourful, eccentric, romantic with a sense of magical realism, while the humour feels closer in tone to Delicatessen, who similarly revels in the morbid. While it’s not got the budget nor the obsessive detail of an Anderson or Jeunet/Caro flick, it more than makes up for it in that Pushing Daisies gives you 22 episodes to snuggle up with and man oh man is this some top-shelf comfy goodness. Some episodes are stronger than others but all are at least pretty great, and it’s a damn shame we didn’t get more. I’ve been slowly (and I really do mean slowly) making my way through this over the course of the last 3 years now. I’ve watched many a series in between but few have remained in my brain for as long as the episode where a dog breeder gets murdered and the team have to investigate his four(!!!) wives, each with a motive stronger than the last. Peak detective comedy shit right there. Maybe every third or fourth TV show I finish I come back to this and watch an episode or two before moving on. I have no idea why. Anyway! Good stuff! Lemme list off a bunch of words that may or may not convince you to watch it. It’s a magical realist romantic black comedy police procedural neo-noir mystery drama that is the most theatre kid thing ever, and it all just works. I think I prefer Wonderfalls just a little bit more as my pick for best Bryan Fuller production despite my predilection for darker humour and crime related plots (Wonderfalls is the most charming, breezy and lighthearted of the 2000s Fullerverse shows and it came into my life at a time where I needed it the most) but no denying that Pushing Daisies would probably eek it out of that coveted top spot had it got one more season to cap off everything. As it stands, it's one of the unsung greats of pre-streaming TV and should be sought after if you like your detective procedurals with a gimmick.