While romping in a field of daisies, Ned's beloved dog, Digby, runs across a highway and is hit by a truck. Ned touches the dead dog and instantly Digby springs back to life. Ned goes back home, not really aware of what this gift might mean.

When Ned's mother drops dead after a blood vessel bursts in her brain, Ned touches her. She instantly pops back to life and appears well. But then, after one minute, Chuck's father drops dead. Even worse, as Ned's mother is giving him a goodnight kiss she dies again, this time forever. At the funerals, Ned and Chuck are filled with emotion, and they share their first and only kiss.

Nineteen years later, Ned (Pace) has grown up to be a pie maker and owner of The Pie Hole, a restaurant and pie shop. When he's not baking pies, he's trying to solve murders with his private-eye business partner, Emerson (McBride), the only person who knows his secret. Emerson finds murder cases in which a reward is offered for information, and Ned touches the murder victim and asks who the killer was. Before a minute passes, Ned touches the person again to send them back to their previous state before another person nearby dies. Then Emerson collects the reward.

However, when Emerson gets the case of a young woman who was killed on a cruise ship, Ned discovers the woman is Chuck (Friel) all grown up but, unfortunately, dead. Emerson and Ned sneak into the funeral home, Emerson for the $50,000 reward and Ned to see Chuck one last time. But after Ned brings Chuck back to life and stares into the eyes of the girl he's always loved, he has to make a decision: send Chuck back to death or let someone else die in her place�and, perhaps even worse, never be able to touch her again without killing her.

A magical mystery masterpiece

Writer Bryan Fuller and director Barry Sonnenfeld were made for each other, and together they've created the best pilot since Lost with ABC's new series, Pushing Daisies. This fall has produced some interesting new shows, but none is better or more original than this magical, romantic mystery series, which feels almost old-fashioned and yet tells its story in a brilliant way, balancing comedy and drama perfectly.

Pushing Daisies' pilot, "Pie-lette," is a visual feast that uses color and camera angles to explore its world. The episode is filled with characters that seem almost normal at first, until they aren't. While Lee Pace as Ned and Anna Friel as Chuck are perfect in their roles as the star-crossed lovers, Kristin Chenoweth as the height-challenged waitress in The Pie Hole, and Swoosie Kurtz and Ellen Greene as Chuck's aunts, Lily and Vivian, add to every scene they are in.

And, using a device that shouldn't work at all, Jim Dale's narration allows the series to move seamlessly through time, filling in the backstory. When we travel back to find out how and why Lily and Vivian, a famed synchronized swimming team, became homebound while raising Chuck, it's weird and funny and a bit sad all at the same time.

It's a rich world that Fuller has created and Sonnenfeld has visualized for us. And while a series such as Journeyman seems to need an explanation as to why its hero is bouncing around time, Pushing Daisies manages to get away without explaining why Ned can bring the dead back to life. "Pie-lette" is so well stuffed with character and story and emotional and visual treats and comedy that the little details of why just don't seem important.

However, while this Pushing Daisies pilot seems like a work of art, there is just no way the series as a whole will be able to sustain its the tone and magic. Luckily, Sonnenfeld has directed Episode 2. Not so luckily, he can't direct them all, just as Fuller can't write them all. So while there is every reason to have high hopes for Pushing Daisies with Fuller and Sonnenfeld as two of the series' executive producers, not every episode can be a masterpiece. Still, if the series manages to hit a high note every once in a while, television will be all the better for it.