Clockwise from left: Lee Pace, Chi McBride and Anna Friel star in 'Pushing Daisies', premiering Wednesday night at 7 on ABC.

Lee Pace admits he's a little nervous because of what people are saying about Pushing Daisies, his romantic comedy-fantasy premiering Wednesday, October 3, on ABC.

His issue? Just about everyone seems to love the show so much.

"If I'm feeling good, I'm very grateful for that," the actor says. "Some days, though, it makes me nervous, like, 'Oh, God, I hope we don't mess it up.' "

It's not as if the creative team can look to another hit show as an example because much of Pushing Daisies takes heart-on-the-sleeve whimsy to delightful and witty new heights.

Pace stars as Ned, a piemaker who discovered as a child that he has the power to bring dead things back to life just by touching them. There's one big hitch, however: If he touches them again, they go back to being dead, permanently.

Now in his late 20s, Ned has a comfortable but emotionally constricted life running his shop, The Pie Hole, with his love-struck waitress, Olive (Kristin Chenoweth). He supplements his baking revenue by helping private investigator Emerson Cod (Chi McBride) solve murder cases for their hefty rewards (Ned simply resurrects the victims long enough to find out who killed them).

His life is changed forever, though, when Ned has to bring back his murdered childhood sweetheart, Charlotte Chuck Charles (Anna Friel), to investigate her death on a cruise ship. Once he revives her, Ned can't bring himself to let Chuck die again. Being reunited with the only girl he ever loved, however, is very bittersweet because Ned knows that if he touches Chuck again, she dies - forever.

Fresh pie and goodness

"From the beginning moments of the pilot, (Ned has) created a place that he understands," Pace says. "He can give people fresh pie and goodness and be a generous person within a small world.

"Then he brings Chuck back to life, and his entire world is blown open. He learns something new, I think, in every episode about how to enjoy his life, how to make other people's lives a better place. That's the big psychology, I think, behind his gift, in that ... it's a tricky one, one that comes with a consequence and a dilemma."

Series creator Bryan Fuller (Heroes) says he first conceived of Pushing Daisies as a possible spin-off to Dead Like Me, his dark Showtime dramedy about a recently deceased girl who dispatches the souls of the departed. If he seems a trifle obsessed with death, though, Fuller insists he isn't morbid about it.

"Well, I guess it sort of is (morbid) by definition," Fuller says, "but I find it really fascinating. I don't think you can look at death without looking at life because it's kind of the punctuation to it. I think there's something very magical and mystical about death, and ... I love that sense of awe and spirituality of there's something greater out there that we don't know on this plane of existence."

That's also the reason why Fuller says he isn't unduly concerned with explaining how and whence young Ned gets his life-restoring touch, which the premiere episode advises "was a gift given to him, but not by anyone in particular."

"For me, when you get into explaining how people have certain gifts or abilities too much, it just takes all the mysticism out of it," Fuller says. "For me, that's the difference between fantasy and science fiction. I think the original 'Star Wars' trilogy was much more fantasy, and then the prequels turned the whole Jedi mysticism into science fiction because it was all this chemical component in their blood or whatever. The party was over. It was no fun anymore.

"I feel the same way about the ability that Ned has. ... There's no real scientific way to break it down and understand it. If there was, I think it would be dry and emotionless. I would rather live in a place of awe with Ned's ability than complete understanding."

Major coup

Landing Friel, a quirkily charming English actress little known to U.S. TV audiences, for the female lead was a major coup, but Friel says the Pushing Daisies script was simply in a class by itself.

"I was a little bit frightened because I never had done quite this style of acting before, where it's a little bi and there's a lot of comedy involved," she says. "But I thought, 'I'm going to choose the thing that scares and challenges me the most.' I loved the whole fairy-tale essence of it all, and I thought it was the most exciting script I had seen in a very long time.

"Chuck is just a wonderful character. I mean, she makes honey for the homeless and she's been raised by these two extremely mad aunts and learned several languages and read thousands and thousands of books. That's a great start for a character."

With Pace and Friel so ably inhabiting their endearing characters, it now falls to Fuller and his writing team to find interesting and even funny ways to deal with Ned's central dilemma: He can't ever touch the girl he loves with all his heart.

Fuller doesn't sound worried, however.

"We're going to have a lot of fun with ... Saran wrap kisses," he reveals. "We're going to see them dancing in beekeeper suits. We're going to go a long way in doing everything we can to get them to touch each other that's not flesh to flesh.

"I think that if this show will end - and hopefully, it will never end - it will probably end with a kiss."

- John Crook, Zap2it