Strolling into the Pie Hole restaurant set of “Pushing Daisies,” with its fluffy crust roof, hanging cherry lamps and sweetly cheery atmosphere, brings an instant smile to one’s face. Surreal and wonderfully weird, there’s nothing else like it on television. For that reason, you hope it will be part of the prime-time landscape for years to come.
That would be fine with Lee Pace and Anna Friel, who are having a blast playing look-but-don’t-touch lovers Ned and Chuck. Inside the Pie Hole on the Warner Bros. lot in Burbank, they’re holding court with a small cluster of reporters and the subject, naturally, turns to their characters’ chaste relationship.
“I think we strike a chord with people because we’re not just sex, sex, sex “…,” Friel says. “I can remember watching ‘Moonlighting’ as a girl and thinking ‘Just please get together. Kiss. Kiss.’ It was fun and lighthearted. That’s what we have on this show: True, beautiful, simple love.”
Now the trick is to get more people to fall in love with them. “Pushing Daisies” was among the handful of shows that did not return last season after the writers strike concluded. Instead, the freshman series went into a deep freeze after only nine episodes, the last of which aired way back on Dec. 12.
So creator Bryan Fuller and executive producer Barry Sonnenfeld face the daunting challenge of not only reintroducing a highly offbeat “forensic fairy tale” to fickle television viewers, but trying to expand what was a relatively modest fan base to begin with. And what about that whole out-of-sight-out-of-mind syndrome? How will that play into things?
Perhaps some Emmy love will help. Despite its limited screen time, “Pushing Daisies” will be vying for a dozen trophies at TV’s big shindig next month. The show is nominated for outstanding comedy and also landed nominations for Pace (best actor, comedy) and Kristin Chenoweth (best supporting actress).
When “Pushing Daisies” returns on Oct. 1 (8 p.m., ABC), more quirky romance and more kooky mayhem are in store. Among the early story lines: Chenoweth’s Olive Snook runs away to join a nunnery (”She looks like the Flying Nun,” Pace says), a creepy scumbag is using a swarm of bees to commit murder, and another heinous crime occurs at a circus. Yeah, not your typical plots.
Of course, much of the show will continue to hinge on the bizarre connection between Ned and Chuck, childhood sweethearts who have reunited in adulthood. He is gifted with the mysterious ability to bring dead things back to life by touching them. Unfortunately, the power works in reverse with people like Chuck, who already have been resurrected. So if he ever touches her, she’ll take a dirt nap.
Talk about sexual tension.
In Season 1, Fuller and his writers toyed with ways Ned and Chuck could be romantic without coming into skin-to-skin contact — like kissing through Saran Wrap. Fans can expect more of that silly stuff this season.
“Bryan invented a weird contraption that allows us to lie next to one another and sort of spoon,” Friel reports.
But won’t this get frustrating after a while? Won’t the actors eventually want their characters to find a way around their dilemma and fall into each other’s arms and ravish one another?
“I hope they don’t, because I think that would be wiggling out of it,” Pace says. “We set up this really great construct for these characters and you’ve got to stay true to it. They can never, never touch.”
The oddball conceit serves to put a fresh bloom on “Daisies.” At a time when so many TV shows are so sexually explicit and leave almost nothing to the imagination, it finds ways to generate romantic heat by holding back a little something.
“Chuck and Ned are never going to get drunk and sleep together,” Pace says. “That’s another show. That will never happen.”
On the other hand, they could get married someday, and Friel is curious about one thing.
“I wonder whether she’d be able to get artificially inseminated,” she asks.
“Not at 8 o’ clock,” replies Pace.
