| Product: |
Pushing Daisies |
| Date: |
18.04.08 (213 review reads) |
| Rating: |
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Advantages: The best thing currently on TV (apart from House)
Disadvantages: No Episode 2!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! !!!
Why is it that TV companies seem endlessly able to make my blood boil? Take Odyssey 5 for instance. This brilliant sci-fi series was canned even before they had finished the first series. Joan of Arcadia only got two series as did one of the best things ever to come out of the US, Dead Like Me. And yet dross like Friends seemed to go on forever.
Now, I confess that Pushing Daisies didn't hit my radar (I made the same mistake with House) but fortunately my daughter was watching it on the TV in her room and came down and said, "You've got to see this. You'll love it. It's just your sort of programme". Fortunately the opening episode was repeated and so we caught it and, you know, she was right. Utterly brilliant. Pushing Daisies is being shown on ITV1 on Saturday night at 9.00pm with the repeat on Monday on ITV2 at the same hour. You can get ITV2 if you have Freeview, even if you don't have Sky or cable.
Pushing Daisies is the new show by Bryan Fuller, he of "Dead Like Me" fame, and the pedigree shows. It demonstrates the same sort of quirky humour for which Fuller is famous but in a setting that is somewhat different to his previous productions.
Most of all, Pushing Daisies is yet another vehicle for enabling British actors to take over the World. You will probably have noticed that recently no US TV series is complete without a Brit, and sometimes two Brits, in a leading role(s). We have the brilliant Hugh Laurie in "House", Sophia Myles in the superb "Moonlight", Lena Headey in "Terminator: The Sara Connor Chronicles", Michelle Ryan playing the "Bionic Woman" perfectly, Eddie Izzard AND Minnie Driver in the outstanding "The Riches", all demonstrating as near faultless American accents as Yanks like James Marsters, Gwyneth Paltrow and Angelina Jolie do Brit ones.
In Pushing Daisies it's the turn of the gorgeous Anna Friel, who is now also wowing Hollywood with her talent. Friel plays Charlotte "Chuck" Charles, secret childhood desire of Ned (we haven't yet learned if he has a second name, who is played by relative newcomer Lee Pace), who used to live across the road when they were kids. Ned discovers very early on in his young life that he has a power. It could be a blessing or a curse; it depends upon how he uses it.
Ned can bring things back to life.
He can also return them to death... forever.
He discovers this "gift" when he touches his dog, Digby, after it has been knocked down by a truck. What he doesn't then notice but which he will later find out is that there are consequences. He finds this out when he brings his Mother back to life after she suffers a brain haemorrhage. In her place, across the road, Chuck's father collapses and dies. He discovers that so long as he returns the person to death within one minute of revival, no one else dies. Otherwise, someone or something has to die it the place of the survivor, usually whoever is nearest. However, that does not prevent the survivor still being vulnerable to a second touch.
Years later Ned, having grown up a very lonely boy, has developed another talent, making pies. He has a pie restaurant, The Pie Hole, but despite the yumminess of his pies, it isn't a great financial success. He is going to the wall until, that is, his secret power is discovered by accident by private detective, Emerson Cod, played to perfection by Chi McBride, who you may remember played the manipulative Edward Vogler in much of the first series of House.
Cod reckons that between them they can earn a lot of money solving unsolvable cases by bringing the dead back to life and asking them who killed them, promising them justice in return for a peaceful death. The subject of this revelation is none other than Chuck, now a grown and very beautiful woman, who has herself been murdered. He brings her back to life but hasn't the heart to kill her again. There is an obvious mutual attraction but Chuck soon learns that they can never touch if she is to carry on living. Most annoyed about this is Cod, who realises that there is now a threesome that is upsetting his plans.
The style of the programme is quite unusual. The sets are very Willy Wonka or the 1990 Dick Tracy film in that they tend to the pastel and the props look somewhat childish and slightly unreal but this just adds to the atmosphere of humour versus tension.
Friel plays Chuck to perfection. If you have ever seen the wonderful French movie, Amelie, then the way that Audrey Tautou played that role is reminiscent. Indeed, all the actors play their parts to perfection. Casting were on a good day when they selected their performers and in taking a chance on Friel, a newcomer to Hollywood, they have triumphed. Not only that but there is a second Brit in the show though you don't see him. That wonderful character actor, Jim Dale, is the narrator for every episode, lending his memorable voice to the action.
Most of all this is "laugh out loud" funny. There are few TV programmes that leave me with aching sides and tears running from my eyes but this does it. If the first episode is anything to go by then we are in for a treat.
So, why the title for this review? Well, we have just learned that ITV have screwed up BigTime. It turns out that they didn't realise that they were buying a series with nine episodes. They had only scheduled slots for eight. Since Euro 08 is unmoveable (everything stops for football!!!!!!) , something had to go. That "something", it seems, is Episode 2!!! Unbelievable.
Now, ITV's excuse is that Episode 2 is a "self-contained" episode and so leaving it out will not cause any confusion in the remaining episodes. I say, with so much dross on TV, why can't they drop something else instead? In any case, it's not as if ITV has only one channel. With Freeview there's another three on which they could show all of the episodes. There really are no excuses.
There is a thread on the DigitalSpy forum that is getting incandescent over this issue. Whether the uproar will have any effect on the dickheads at ITV remains to be seen. Someone there should resign over this, if they have any sense of honour. I doubt anyone will though.
Nevertheless, whether the second episode is shown on TV or not, under no circumstances should you miss the rest of the series. Season 2 has already started recording in the States, which will, I understand, run to 22 episodes. Let's see ITV try to leave any of those out!!! Better still, let's hope the Beeb beats them to it, just like they did the F1 franchise.
In the meantime though, there is another solution, even if ITV doesn't do the honourable thing. I have discovered that Episode 2 is available to download from the Net. Now, normally I am dead against this sort of thing but in this case I feel that ITV only have themselves to blame. If you do a search on Mininova you will find it. Good hunting!
Summary: A brilliant new quirky US comedy, starring yet another Brit.
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