Starring Osman Cerfon, Florence Fauquet, and Catherine Pierlovisi, Pushing Daisies follows Ned, a pie-maker who can reanimate the dead with a single touch. If the revived person or thing remains alive for more than a minute, a nearby life value—balancing the cosmic scale—drops away. A second touch will erase the revival for good, returning them to the grave. This delicate rule threads through Ned’s life from childhood onward, shaping every choice he makes.
As a child, Ned brings back his mother after an aneurysm, a moment that spirals into tragedy: the neighbor and childhood sweetheart Charlotte “Chuck” Charles loses her father, and that same night Ned’s mother dies permanently after kissing him goodnight. Chuck’s agoraphobic aunts, Vivian and Lily, move in to help, and Ned is sent away to a boarding school by his father, tearing the two children apart and setting the stage for years of separation and longing.
Growing up, Ned becomes a pie-maker and opens a little restaurant called The Pie Hole, where Olive Snook works as a devoted waitress who keeps a hopeful spark for him alive. The restaurant struggles financially until private investigator Emerson Cod stumbles onto Ned’s unusual gift and hatches a plan: Ned will briefly bring murder victims back to life, allowing Emerson to question them about their deaths. They will rapidly solve cases and share the reward money. The scheme, built on cautious trust, works—at least at first.
The plot takes a sharp, personal turn when news arrives that Chuck, Ned’s long-missed love, was murdered. Ned revives her, but he cannot bear to let her die again. The bond between Ned and Chuck rekindles, and Chuck moves into Ned’s life. Although they can never physically touch, their renewed relationship deepens as Chuck joins Ned and Emerson in a new venture: they will take on more cases, revived for the purpose of uncovering the truth behind each death—and to do so they must navigate the moral and emotional minefields that come with Ned’s power.
Meanwhile, Emerson Cod confronts his own compelling quest: his missing daughter, taken away by her mother, a former con woman. A chance encounter with a publisher of pop-up books inspires Emerson to create and publish his own book, hoping the magical pages will guide his daughter back to him. Chuck, for her part, wrestles with the secrecy surrounding her revival, trying to shield Vivian and Lily from the truth while they slowly come to terms with the reality that their beloved niece is alive.
A web of family history emerges when it’s revealed that Chuck is Lily’s daughter, born from an affair with Chuck’s father while he was engaged to Lily. Ned revives Chuck’s father to ask him questions, but Chuck cunningly convinces Ned that touching her father again is the only way to keep him close—and so the dynamic between father and daughter, and Ned, becomes fraught with tension and unresolved questions. The father-daughter bond is tested as the elder man proposes a world-traveling life, while Chuck chooses to remain in town, leaving him to depart alone.
In the final turn, the epilogue ties up loose ends: Emerson’s daughter appears back in his life, Chuck finally reveals to Lily and Vivian that she is alive, and Olive, now in a new romance with Randy Mann—the taxidermist friend of the group—opens The Intrepid Cow, a restaurant dedicated to macaroni and cheese. The story closes on a note of reconciliation and new beginnings, with the living and the dead continuing to navigate love, loyalty, and the costs of keeping secrets.
