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Ellen Gray | 'Daisies' full of wit, whimsy

PUSHING DAISIES. 8 tonight, Channel 6. IN A TV season full of time-travelers, brainiacs and walking, talking computer databases - and, hey, that's just Mondays - how's a guy who bakes pies for a living supposed to stand out?

PUSHING DAISIES. 8 tonight, Channel 6.

IN A TV season full of time-travelers, brainiacs and walking, talking computer databases - and, hey, that's just Mondays - how's a guy who bakes pies for a living supposed to stand out?

If he's Ned (Lee Pace), the mild-mannered hero of ABC's splendidly subversive "Pushing Daisies," he can do it with a single touch.

Corpses spring to attention if Ned lays a finger on them. It's an ability he discovered as a child, when his golden retriever, Digby, was killed by a truck, only to be instantly revived by his young master's touch.

"This touch was a gift given to him, but not by anyone in particular," notes narrator Jim Dale, neatly sidestepping the religious implications of raising the dead even as some of the practical implications of Ned's "gift" become painfully clear.

Let's just say that the gift-giver giveth and the gift-giver taketh away.

Indeed, Ned's universe appears to operate on strict mathematical principles, demanding if not an eye for an eye, then a life for a life.

And so, like any other TV superhero who discovers there are limits to his abilities, the pie-maker takes on a secondary career as a crime-solver, an occupation that outnumbers that of dead-raising pie-maker roughly 300 to 1 on network television.

When a private investigator (Chi McBride) discovers Ned in the act of giving and taking, he coerces him into joining him in a scheme to solve murders by raising the victims, interviewing them and then redispatching them, a plan that works with "CSI"-like dependability - not to mention "CSI"-like special effects - until one of the victims turns out to be Ned's childhood sweetheart, a girl named Chuck (Anna Friel).

For some of us, and by that I mean those who found "Daisies" creator Bryan Fuller's "Dead Like Me" and "Wonderfalls" irresistible in a way that the people who canceled them did not, Ned's reunion with Chuck is where the fun begins.

For those whose idea of fun doesn't include a love affair where the hero and heroine can never touch each other, much less kiss, this might be where it ends.

Which is a shame, because those people are going to miss the emotionally stunted synchronized swimmers, sisters played to gleeful perfection by Swoosie Kurtz and Ellen Greene.

They're also going to miss getting to know Olive Snook (Kristin Chenoweth), the waitress at Ned's pie shop - called, yes, the Pie Hole - and the woman who only thinks she's the love of Ned's life.

The Barry Sonnenfeld-directed pilot is so awash in whimsy and color that grown-ups might mistake it for a children's show, but the moment Olive innocently remarks that she used to think "masturbation meant chewing your food," well, they won't be thinking that anymore.

Most of all, they'll miss falling for Chuck.

"I suppose dying's as good an excuse as any to start living," she remarks at one point, neatly summing up two seasons of Fuller's "Dead Like Me."

Friel, who bears a passing resemblance to the young Debra Winger, volleys Fuller's staccato dialogue back and forth with Pace in a manner that suggests she could have kept up with anyone on "Gilmore Girls" or "The West Wing."

Me, I wouldn't want to miss a word.

The readers weigh in . . .

Sadly, not all of this year's Daily News Reader Reviewers shared my fondness for "Pushing Daisies."

Maybe I should have skipped the chocolate-chip cookies and baked them pie instead?

The Everybody's a Critic panel split sharply on "Daisies," awarding it an average score of 5.7 out of 10, but with individual ratings ranging from 2 all the way to 10.

"It was another sappy look at what could happen if we had magical powers," wrote Stephanie Stith, of Germantown, who nevertheless gave the show a 7.

"Unfunny!" declared Naomi Loadholt, of West Philadelphia, who awarded it a 3 and also disliked the "cartoon colors."

"I really don't see it making it past one season," wrote Don Devlin, of Mayfair, who also gave it a 3 and suggested that "Daisies" might not even make it that far.

Nevertheless, Connie Slingbaum, of Havertown, said it's likely she'll be watching.

"If Storybook Land and 'Twin Peaks' had a baby, it might look something like 'Pushing Daisies,' " wrote Slingbaum, who deemed it a 9.

"I thought it was a really great show, different from anything else on TV." *

Send e-mail to graye@phillynews.com.