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ABC Television president Stephen McPherson told reporters that the upcoming fantasy series Pushing Daisies will debut in Lost's old timeslot because it's so quirky there isn't a lead-in show that would work for it.
"It's always challenging for new shows to find an audience, but I think its originality and the fact that it is different the way Lost was when Lost launched [make that timeslot appropriate] at 8 o'clock," McPherson said in a news conference in Beverly Hills, Calif., last month. "I think it is a show that, you know, doesn't fit neatly behind any other show."
Pushing Daisies, created by Bryan Fuller (Dead Like Me), is about a guy who brings dead people back to life and features some gruesome crimes and dead bodies. But ABC is promoting the show as a family series. (Barry Sonnenfeld directed the pilot.)
"To me, it's a family show," McPherson said. "I mean, the magical side of it, even the gore, if you will, of somebody being dead is going to be played like it is in the pilot, never in any way gratuitous and in fact humorous 99 percent of the time. So, for us, we feel like it actually is a good anchor to that night."
For his part, Fuller said he doesn't see the show as being morbid. "I don't think that you can look at death without looking at life, because it's kind of the punctuation to it," he said. "So I think there's something very magical and mystical about death, and I would say I'm much more of a magical and mystical person than a morbid person, because I love that sense of awe and spirituality of 'there's something greater out there that we don't know and we're not qualified to know and we won't know on this plane of existence.'"
Pushing Daisies stars Lee Pace, Anna Friel, Swoosie Kurtz and Kristin Chenoweth. It premieres Oct. 3 and will air Wednesdays at 8 p.m. ET/PT. —Mike Szymanski
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