The facts are these: If any show this season flirted with cancellation before it even debuted, it was surely Pushing Daisies. The brainchild of Bryan Fuller, creator of the late lamented Dead Like Me and prematurely buried Fox series Wonderfalls, and his partner Barry Sonnenfeld, perhaps best known for the grimly funny Addams Family movies, this pilot received immense critical buzz for its quirky promise and charm.

'Quirky'? That can be the kiss of death. While many of the pilot's early viewers were entranced by the introduction of the show's sweet romance, most were skeptical about its ability both to maintain its tone and quality over multiple episodes, and more than that, its ability to maintain viewers over time. The pilot itself, after all, was shot very much like a somewhat foreshortened feature film; add thirty minutes and a subplot, and you might be seeing it at the multiplex, once and never again.

After a timeslot-winning premiere and ratings that remain stable through multiple episodes, including one opposite the first game of the World Series? Surprise! Viewers have embraced this fable that wraps a bittersweet center musing about the impermanence of life and love and the greater meaning of death in a brightly colored candy coating of gorgeous visuals and rapid-fire wit. Alternately grim and sentimental, Pushing Daisies might seem an acquired taste, but if so, it's one that a surprising number of people seem to find delightful.

As we are told in flashback, this is the story of young Ned, a boy with an amazing gift. When Ned touches the dead, miraculously, they are restored to life, a gift he first uses on his golden retriever, Digby. But Ned soon learns there are limits and dark sides to this gift. Young Ned is in love with one Charlotte Charles, a girl better known as “Chuck”, but learns the painful truth about his own gifts when, after reviving his mother from the dead and allowing her to live past a one-minute limit (arrived at scientifically in one of the next episodes), it kills Charlotte's father in exchange shortly after. As his mother kisses young Ned good-night, the other great drawback to his gift is revealed; a second touch to any dead person or thing so revived will cause them to immediately go back to being dead. These tragic accidents that leave Ned and his childhood sweetheart as virtual orphans haunt him even as an adult.

As one might guess, our hero Ned grows up with some issues, starting with tactophobia and avoidance of emotional commitment, and coincidentally, nursing a small lingering crush on the girl he left behind. Ned makes extra money on the side raising murder victims to life for short interrogations with private detective Emerson Cod, played to acerbic perfection by Chi McBride, so they can find out who killed them and collect on rewards. In his day job, he manages a bakery - hilariously named 'The Pie Hole' - and uses his gifts to transform rotten fruit into fresh and delectable treats that he himself can never so much as taste. His waitress, Olive, portrayed with actress Kristin Chenoweth's perky wee blonde brand of bite, watches Ned's dog and nurses a hopeless crush on the piemaker.

And then, one day, Charlotte Charles dies, the victim of mysterious strangulation on a pleasure cruise which she took to stretch her legs and experience life away from the maiden aunts who raised her after her father's death, these last hilariously played by Broadway and television vets Swoosie Kurtz and Ellen Greene. Ned, confronted with the temptation to see what might have been, even if he can only touch it the once and never again, crosses all the lines he has told himself he can never cross, and asks her the question: "What if you didn't have to be dead?". When a reanimated Chuck accepts his offer to go on living, but insists in turn (to the chagrin of original partner Emerson) that they find her killers, the fairytale really begins.

This is a fairytale, and like so many of the best series in recent memory, Pushing Daisies takes place in a recognizable universe that's not quite our real world. It allows the characters to burst into song and to accept extreme plot elements like futuristic cars that run on dandelions and supposedly-spectral horse jockeys without quite stretching our suspension of belief. It helps that, like the best fairytales, the sense of wonder is coupled with an acknowledgment that life is grim and sometimes, cut too short. Although sometimes the show plays death for laughs, its effects on the living characters are taken seriously. While the premises are fantastic and the coincidences magical, each character and their motivations feels very real. Indeed, the show's strength is its acting and characterization; one would be hard pressed to find more capable players and endearing characters in one spot, from leads to guest stars.

Lead actors Lee Pace and Anna Friel are the breakout stars who anchor the story, and both are equal to what is required. Pace is a lanky, handsome scarecrow of a leading man, and has the difficult task of playing someone disconnected and distant from all those around him, but whom we nonetheless root for. His Ned pastes his arm's-length awkwardness over his boyish charm, but it's not a perfect fit and the sweetness shines through.

Friel's challenge is no less daunting, because we have to believe that she is worth bringing back from the dead and killing another human being in exchange for, and then worth his efforts to never touch her again, despite her proximity. She likewise succeeds, making her Chuck a sheltered girl with a big heart now given the opportunity to live her life for herself as she never had before her death. The pair's chemistry is impeccable. There have been any number of ways around the no-touching rule between the couple to date, each more creative than the next, but one of the charms of this romance really is its emphasis that the loss of some romantic element most people take for granted can't eradicate real love and emotion.

The episodes to follow have been consistent in building on its themes and do not let small details slip. Rather than having the jealous Emerson accept Chuck's involvement in his arrangement with Ned without protest, for example, he exacts a comical bit of revenge that requires Ned to confess some things he would rather not have to tell Chuck about her revival. Rather than milking Olive's crush to make her a background figure of cartoon-like contempt, within just a few episodes, we have as much sympathy for her as any character, and indeed, she is used to keep Chuck's maiden aunts - former synchronized swimmers with complimentary personality disorders - in the main picture of the story in a very clever fashion.

Pushing Daisies is also a visually stunning show, from sets to costumes. Sonnenfeld is particularly credited for its look, somewhat intentionally borrowed from the French film fable 'Amelie', and sharing more than a few common notes with the Tim Burton film 'Edward Scissorhands'. Its sequences are saturated with color, and its characters dress to match; its story lines invite amazing visuals, from the dandelion-puff advertising decor of the aforementioned car of the future and its genuinely creepy use of crash test dummies, to a hilarious sequence where Emerson Cod gets stuck in a hole like Pooh Bear, to illegal city rooftop beehives and swirling fields full of retired historical windmills and the eerie indigo-saturated nighttime grave-digging to question a somewhat 'moist' corpse. Daisies' world may be beyond the norm, but it is never boring.

If you have a taste for dark humor with a little sprinkle of sugar; if you're a fan of musical comedies and always thought more sitcoms should burst into song; if you think that Roald Dahl isn't used enough to inform current media trends, Pushing Daisies may be the show for you. I look forward to reviewing the episodes in the season to come.