By Kinney Littlefield (AP) October 31, 2007

Lee Pace has the magic touch.

Relaxing on the set of his critically praised series, "Pushing Daisies," Pace taps the air teasingly with his forefinger. It's how Pace's character, Ned, makes others live or die with a single stroke on the darkly whimsical ABC drama.

It's also how Pace keeps Anna Friel, his lively British co-star, in line during long production hours. Friel plays Ned's longtime love, Charlotte "Chuck" Charles.

"When Anna acts up on set, I just touch her like this," Pace said, pointing a magic finger.

The finger-tap is a joke on Ned and Chuck's deadly dilemma on "Pushing Daisies" (8 p.m., Wednesdays). In the show's pilot, Ned resurrected Chuck after she was murdered. Now they live together.

If Ned touches Chuck once more - directly, skin-on-skin - she's back in a casket, pronto.

"Just sitting together in a car, it's life or death stakes," Pace said of the seemingly doomed couple. "Every day when we block scenes, I think, 'How should we hold our bodies?'"

The physical intimacy of Ned and Chuck is chaperoned on the Warner Bros. lot in Burbank, by executive producer Barry Sonnenfeld ("Men in Black") who directs the series.

"Barry's always going, 'Ooops! Don't you dare touch Anna,"' Friel said. "It's hard, trying to fit together into a tight two-shot." On a recent day of production, Friel was fighting a bad cold in her trailer. "Don't get too close," she said.

"We actually did try going for a week with no touching at all on set," Friel said of her co-star. "We didn't do too good. We're both - particularly me - incredibly tactile. By day three I was dead three times."

The dangers of being close

If "Pushing Daisies" carries a message about sexual abstinence, "that was never the intention, but you can certainly read it in," co-creator Bryan Fuller said. "I suppose the show is really about the dangers of any kind of intimacy, not just physical intimacy."

Fuller also created "Dead Like Me," the Showtime series about grim reapers, and "Wonderfalls," the short-lived Fox series in which inanimate objects talked. With "Daisies," he meshes fantasy, comedic romance, comfort food and murder.

When he's not baking perfect pies, Ned investigates homicides, with help from Chuck and private eye Emerson Cod (Chi McBride).

Zap, and Ned revives victims long enough for them to reveal their killers. Zap, and they're dead again.

"Ned's real gift is the understanding of the value of life and death," Pace said. "He's not careless with his powers. But after he brought Chuck back to life, everything is different for him. It's like his life is happening for the first time."

Fantasy aside, playing Ned is not a stretch, Pace said. He previous played a transgendered female entertainer in Showtime's 2003 telefilm "Soldier's Girl" and a CIA agent in the 2006 film "The Good Shepherd." He also had a supporting role in "Wonderfalls."

"There's a way that Bryan writes for Ned that's the way I speak," Pace said. "I ramble. And a big challenge with Ned is just trusting that less is enough. Ned's range of emotions is like this," he said, squeezing a bit of air between thumb and forefinger.

Indeed, the acting on the show is understated, by design.

"That's a tribute to Barry Sonnenfeld's directing style," Fuller said. "Since everything in the show is so vivid, if the acting were also vivid it might be too much." Visually, "Pushing Daisies" pops with rich colors and quirky sets including the Pie Hole, Ned's restaurant-in-the-round with a crust-shaped roof.

Homage to Hitchcock

"Daisies" also pays homage to one of Fuller's favorite filmmakers, Alfred Hitchcock. One episode will evoke the dream sequence in Hitchcock's "Vertigo," Fuller said. Another will send up the shower scene in "Psycho."

"And there's a big homage to Hitchcock's 'The Birds,' with a character who's pathologically afraid of birds," Fuller said.

On the romantic side, visual jokes abound. Ned and Chuck must never brush flesh against flesh. But they adopt inventive protective barriers: cellophane, body bags and beekeeper suits.

"Actually, there's something about the not-touching that's kind of hot," Pace said. "Ned and Chuck are turned on by wishing they could touch. When they cross each other in a doorway, they share that moment of, 'I wish I could kiss you, I wish I could run to bed with you - but I can't.' But there's still something sexy about it, you know?"