Weirdest Fall TV Shows

With the success of such fantasy/supernatural shows as "Lost" and "Heroes", the networks are looking to enhance their fall lineups with shows that are unusual. Some have interesting twists, some are downright weird. Here is a look at some of the weirdest fall tv shows.

One of the more anticipated shows is ABC's "Pushing Daisies", which centers around Ned, a pie-maker, (played by Lee Pace) who with a single touch, can bring anything that's dead back to life. Any dead thing he touches - rotting fruit, wilted plants, and the bodies of animals and people - comes back to life. This amazing gift has two important drawbacks, however; if he touches something twice, it dies forever, and if the revived thing/person doesn't die again within one minute, something or someone close dies in its place.

With such emphasis on death this show could easily be a macabre bummer, but with clever wit by creator Bryan Fuller (who created the similarly ghoulish but funny "Dead Like Me"), and such vibrant settings by Barry Sonnefeld (of "Men in Black" fame), it could breakthrough into a mainstream hit.

The show also painstakingly focuses on time, giving the ages of the characters in years, days, weeks, and minutes. Fuller explained this meticulous timekeeping by likening it to the reflections that people have in their dying moments: "The motivation is that at the end of your life, down to the minute, you look at every minute as precious," he told the LA Times.

Another new series that deals with death is "Reaper", a show from CW about a twenty-one year old slacker Sam (played by Bret Harrison) who discovers that his parents had sold his soul to the devil before he was born. Satan comes to employ young Sam to be his bounty hunter for souls who have escaped Hell (one of the tools he uses is a Dirt Devil). Kevin Smith ("Clerks", "Chasing Amy") directed the pilot.

CBS is bringing the dead to life with "Moonlight", which is about a vampire private investigator named Mick St. John (Alex O'Loughlin). He battles crime, other vampires, his love for a mortal woman (Beth Turner played by Sophia Myles), and his own thirst for blood. If that sounds familiar, it's because David Greenwalt, the co-creator of the "Buffy" spin-off series "Angel", is the executive producer for "Moonlight".

NBC is going for time travel rather than the dead (or undead) with "Journeyman", a series about San Francisco reporter Dan Vasser (Kevin McKidd), who realizes that he is able to travel through time. He creates his own love triangle when he randomly jumps back in time to find his ex-fiance Livia (Moon Bloodgood), who had died in a plane crash. He then has to work with the emotional upheavel of finding a lost love and dealing with his love for his wife Katie (Gretchen Egolf).

"New Amsterdam", a new Fox drama series, deals with a different sort of time travel - immortality. New York detective John Amsterdam is actually a Dutch soldier who is over three centuries old, granted immortality when he saved a Native American girl by stepping between her and a sword in 1642 during a massacre of her tribe. According to the girl's spell, he will live until he finds his true love. The gift is also a curse, as Amsterdam loses his friends and family to old age and succumbs to alcoholism, but becomes sober in 1965 and regularly attends AA meetings. Amsterdam isn't completely alone, however; he has a best friend and confidante, Omar (Stephen Henderson), who owns a jazz club; his partner, Eva Marquez (Zuleikha Robinson), and Dr. Sara Dillane (Alexie Gilmore) who pronounced Amsterdam dead after a massive heart attack (although, of course, he was still immortal).

With these shows making their debut soon, it's clear that audiences will have their pick for anything off the beaten path, whether it's a quirky comedy or a harrowing drama. All the networks have strange shows up their sleeves, and it's only a matter of time before we see which oddities will join the ranks of the immortal or the (un)dead.