Warthog At Large

I was able to catch the TV show Pushing Daisies on cable. It threw me off at first because of the stylized visuals and narrative but it’s actually pretty endearing. The plot revolves around a piemaker named Ned who has the power to bring the dead back to life by touching them. The catch is if he touches them a second time, they’d die again and stay that way for good. Also, if a dead creature that he brings back to life stays alive for more than one minute, another creature of roughly equivalent biological stature will die in its place. So when he revived his mom from a fatal aneurysm, his childhood sweetheart’s dad dropped dead. In another episode, three resurrected frogs equated to three dead sparrows. I guess the writers didn’t bother anymore with proper taxonomical details on this one.

The piemaker was able to make a profitable venture out of this by teaming up with a private detective to solve murder cases and pocket the reward money. After all, what better way to find out how the victim died than by resurrecting him for a minute and asking him about it. Things became interesting (and this is where the pilot episode takes off, really) when Ned’s childhood sweetheart was murdered on a cruise ship. He revives her and ends up letting her live beyond the customary minute which results in the death of the funeral home director. To eliminate the guilt baggage, the funeral guy was portrayed as a contemptuous opportunist who steals valuables from the bodies that are brought in.

Naturally, Ned and Chuck - the childhood sweetheart - fall in love but must live with the tiny complication of not being able to touch each other. Come to think of it, this is the dream TV show of moral conservatives. No sex scene whatsoever. In one episode where they kiss, each was enclosed in a transparent body bag. I’ve only watched two episodes so far though so I don’t know what’s still in store. I guess each episode will feature a murder case for them to solve and enough cutesy romantic stuff to keep the plot alive. And Ned still keeps the secret of accidentally causing the death of Chuck’s father so that’s another fodder for tension and conflict.

As I mentioned earlier, the show makes itself a little different by having a stylized design and narration technique. The colors are bright, vibrant, and downright bubblegum-inspired. There’s also an omniscient voice-over narrator that pops out every now and then. The dialogues are crisp, witty, and funny and the actors are all charming in their own way. The overall appeal reminds me of the French film Amelie. The actor who plays Chuck even looks a little bit like Audrey Tautou. Chi McBride who also appeared in the first season of House portrays the private detective and the waitress is played by Kristin Chenoweth who I thought looked really familiar until I remembered where I first saw her: in the humdrum Robin Williams comedy film RV.

HARDtalk is a BBC talk show where the most popular line is “let me finish.” The topics are deathly serious: Israeli-Palestinian conflict, US foreign policy, intergenerational effects of Black slavery, and other grim-faced, eyebrow-furrowing, anti-thesis-of-Paris-Hilton issues that plague the world today. The guests are also just as impressive: Samantha Power, Pulitzer-winning author and former foreign policy adviser of Barack Obama who, as a testament to the mundaneness of our times, is now probably most famous for her “monster” remark against Hillary Clinton; Kwame Kweih-Armah, award-winning British playwright; Mary Robinson, former president of Ireland; and other prominent figures who play pivotal roles in the grim-faced, eyebrow-furrowing issues of today.

But the best part of the show is the relentless struggle of both interviewer and interviewee on who gets to talk. In an apparent effort to live up to the name of the show, the host constantly interrupts and cuts off the guest every chance he gets. Yes kids, this is HARDtalk, where talking is the hardest thing to do. Not to be outdone of course, feisty interviewees try their damnedest not be deterred in finishing their sentences. This results in an awesome verbal explosion peppered with a nice British accent that leaves the viewer either madly exasperated or laughing uncontrollably.

To be fair,the conversations are almost always intelligent and the questions are sharp and relevant but it sure is still fun to watch two smart people go at it in a half-hour battle of interrupting each other. Forget The View. This British gabfest is way more intense.