It's not often I feel compelled to write a review, especially of a TV show, but I've caught a quirky new comedy that has been a lot of fun so far.

"Pushing Daisies" is about a piemaker, Ned, who as a boy discovered he had a unique ability: he could make dead things come back to life. There's a catch, of course. If the person or thing is reanimated for more than a minute, something else has to die in its place. If Ned touches the reanimated thing again, it stays dead forever. In a flashback, we saw Young Ned experimenting with that. Also, he reanimated his faithful dog, which he can no longer pet.

Flashing forward, Emerson Cod, a private detective, has latched on to Ned's talent, having him reanimate corpses to solve mysteries (for a fee, of course). However, one person Ned reanimates is Charlotte "Chuck" Charles, his childhood sweetheart who was murdered. And now the dilemma. He allowed her to stay reanimated. The funeral director, unfortunately, suffered the consequences. However, we learned in one of the episodes that he really wasn't a very nice guy at all.

Ned owns a pie restaurant, The Pie Hole, and his waitress, Olive Snook, has a crush on him, but Ned has not returned her interest. Throw in Chuck's two weird aunts, Vivian and Lily Charles, who used to be a famous "mermaid" swim team, and you have the basic cast. Then toss in some equally weird supporting cast that comes through and a strange narrator a la Rocky and Bullwinkle and you have the whole show.

Lee Pace plays Ned quite effectively-a sort of lost romantic frustrated with having the love of his life close at hand but unable to put a hand on her. Pace's own career has been a bit quirky, with one of his first major productions being the 2003 "Soldier's Girl," where he plays a transgendered person in love with a Soldier.

Anna Friel, an English import, plays the girlfriend Charlie quite believably and with intelligence. I can believe that she has come back from the dead and is enjoying every minute of it. Friel has been in a lot, including playing Lady Claire, the medieval love interest, in the film "Timeline."

Chi McBride is Emerson Cod, a no-nonsense detective, or so he would have you believe, who pushes Ned to reanimate people...and not particularly for the charity of it. Good job here. McBride has also been in a lot, including a character a couple of seasons ago who tried to get Dr. Gregory House fired. He was also seen on "Boston Public" and "Boston Legal."

I am familiar with Kristin Chenowith from her work as Glinda in the musical "Wicked" and as the press secretary in the final seasons of "West Wing." Here she plays a jealous Olive Snook, snooping around to find out who Charlie really is and cozening up to Charlie's aunts. It's a fun role and Chenowith looks like she is having fun with it.

Brandishing her signature red hair and wearing a bejeweled eyepatch, Swoozie Kurtz does well as Aunt Lily. Kurtz I actually saw on Broadway a billion years ago in "The House of Blue Leaves," in which she played a woman who tried to commit suicide by cutting her wrists with spoons (didn't work). She was also Alex, one of the sisters on "Sisters."

Aunt Vivian is delightfully played by Ellen Greene. Greene is the perfect complement to Kurtz. She is probably best remembered as the original Audrey (love interest, not the plant) in "Little Shop of Horrors," both the stage play and the film.

The final regular is Jim Dale, the narrator, who we never see. Dale has the right voice for this and the writing keeps the quirkiness up. Dale, also a British import, has been in show business for some time. I first remember seeing him on the Tony awards as the lead in the musical "Barnum." Harry Potter fans may know him as the narrator on the American version of the books on CD (sorry Jim, but I still like the British versions better with Stephen Fry).

Hopefully this series will survive the writers' strike. Eight episodes have already been shot, so we have at least another month before the reruns start. Catch back episodes on www.abc.com. Otherwise catch it on ABC-TV Wednesday nights.

Definite A+.