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Jul 27, 2007 05:48 AM Rob Salem TV Critic
LOS ANGELES, Calif. — “Some people see the glass half full, and some see it half-empty,” Chi McBride is saying of his new boss, director/producer Barry Sonnenfeld. “Barry sees a half a glass of poison.”
“It’s like I always tell you, Chi,” Sonnenfeld counters. “Live in fear.”
Sonnenfeld can afford to lighten up a little. His quirky new ABC series, Pushing Daisies, is the undisputed critical hit of the network portion of the critics’ tour, which wound up here yesterday.
A wry fairy-tale fantasy painted in bright primary colours, the single-camera comedy hour tells the story of a mild-mannered pie-maker (Lee Pace of Wonderfalls) blessed with the extraordinary gift of reviving the dead with a single touch — for exactly 60 seconds. After that, someone else nearby must die. Unless he touches them again, and they go back to being dead.
Which generally works out fine — once he teams up with a private detective (McBride) to solve murders by quickly interrogating the reanimated victim. His interpersonal relationships are another story, once he has resurrected his beloved dog and his childhood crush (British actor Anna Friel), and can therefore never touch either one of them again.
Hell of a way to play out a love story.
“We’re going to have a lot of fun with prophylactics,” offers writer/creator Bryan Fuller, revisiting the themes of magic and mortality he explored in Wonderfalls and Dead Like Me. “There will be Saran Wrap kisses. We’re going to see them dancing in beekeeper suits. We’re going to go a long way in doing everything we can to get them to touch each other that’s not flesh to flesh.
“And I think that the show will probably end — and hopefully, it will never end — but if it does, it will end with a kiss.”
Given the critical reaction here, that climactic kiss may be a long way off. The stellar cast also includes Swoosie Kurtz and Broadway babes Ellen Greene and Kristin Chenoweth — and yes, an all-musical episode is an inevitability.
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