Pushing Daisies

I’ve rounded up some reviews from the British press on Pushing Daisies first episode, which aired last Saturday. While fans and regular viewers seem to appreciate it (it did really well in the ratings), the critics aren’t impressed…

The New Stateman:

Lee Pace is as bland an actor as I’ve ever seen. The pies that he is so obsessed with baking are more interesting than him.

As for Friel, how come she has suddenly struck so lucky - she’s famous . . . in America - after a career that had encompassed such delights as the films Goal! and Goal! 2, ITV1’s Watermelon, and some ads for Pantene Pro-V Ice Shine? I’m damned if I know. She, too, is a good deal less captivating than a pie. “I didn’t know if I could do comedy,” she said in one recent interview. Well, now she does know: she can’t. But her hair looks nice. That shampoo. It really does seem to do the trick.

The Guardian:

It’s gone down pretty well over there, apparently. You can see why. It has a Tim Burton look about it - all super-stylised, bright colours, kinda trippy. It looks like a paint commercial, has Amélie kookiness, Terry Pratchett fantasy, and death - death’s big this year.

Some people may mistake all this for some kind of literariness. I think it’s just really irritating. And twee. And doesn’t mean anything - puns for puns’ sake, super-speedy so people think it’s clever. Quirky - that’s the word, isn’t it? I’m not very good at quirky. Thanks for the seeds, though; let’s hope at least one Anna comes up.

The Daily Telegraph:

For some TV dramas, that might be enough quirkiness to be going on with. Instead, Pushing Daisies supplies a full supporting cast of equal eccentricity – including Chuck’s aunts: a pair of retired synchronised swimmers who, according to the narrator, “share matching personality disorders and a love of fine cheese”.

All in all, it’s not surprising that the programme’s idiosyncrasy can sometimes feel a little self-conscious. Still, if future episodes can relax just a bit, there’s enough neat dialogue, deft plot-twisting and sly charm in place to suggest a series worth persisting with.

The Independent:

Pushing Daisies badly needs a heart, but it has art direction instead: a welter of Fisher-Price colours and whimsical inventions, such as Ned’s pie shop, with its crimped-crust roof, or Chuck’s guardian aunts, Vivian and Lily, a retired synchronised-swimming duo who share “matching personality disorders and a love of fine cheese”. That combination of symmetry and arbitrary quirkiness is also true of the direction, which frames scene after scene as a camp tableau in which pattern-making matters far more than content.

Pushing Daisies, Pushing Daisies in the UK, Pushing Daisies UK Review