Pushing Daisies is the latest hour-long sitcom from Bryan Fuller, creator of Wonderfalls & Dead Like Me, and it feels like a fusion of those two shows, by way of Ghost Whisperer. Wonderfalls’ Lee Pace plays Ned, a pieman (as in “Simple Simon met a…”) who discovered early on he had the power to revive the dead, if only for a minute. One touch brings them back to life; a second touch kills them again forever. As long as he doesn’t touch a former corpse a second time, they can live out their normal existence. The caveat being that someone else nearby will take their place (If this all seems too convoluted, it actually plays out quite well). Chi McBride is a detective who finds out Ned’s secret, and partners with him to crack unsolved murder cases by asking the revived victims themselves who killed them. British beauty Anna Friel rounds out the cast as Chuck, Ned’s childhood love, a former corpse he revived, and now can tragically never touch again.

The pilot (cleverly titled “Pie-lette”), is helmed by Barry Sonnenfeld, who directed Lemony Snicket’s A Series of Unfortunate Events and The Addams Family. The show has a similar candy-colored, in-your-face fantasy look to it, and makes extensive use of CG and other camera tricks to push reality. I found this to border on cloying, but I understand the look they’re going for. In Ned & Chuck, Fuller wants to tell the most idyllic storybook romance on TV. The writing is sharp and snappy in a Sorkin-esque way, the acting seems to hit all the right notes, and the whole thing is narrated in a cosy, reassuring style by Jim Dale, whom many will recognize as the guy who reads the Harry Potter audio-books (I guess he needs the work now).

In a world where ratings don’t matter, this is the kind of quirky, smart television I’d expect to be a huge hit and go on for years. But that’s what I thought about the short-lived Wonderfalls, too. My advice: catch it while you still can, before it’s replaced with something like Two and a Half Men, or worse –ulp– reality TV.

Pushing Daisies airs Wednesdays at 8PM on ABC, but if TV is “so 20th Century” as it is for me, wait a day and watch it online in HD on ABC’s streaming player, here: http://dynamic.abc.go.com/streaming/landing