BURBANK, Calif. — Ned the pie maker can bring the dead back to life with a touch of his finger, but for ABC's "Pushing Daisies," resurrection is more complicated.

The drama, a unique mix of romance, comedy, fantasy and crime-solving, produced just nine episodes last fall, not always smoothly. Then it abruptly shut down last November, along with much of Hollywood, for the three-month writers' strike.

When that cloud was lifted, ABC decided to shelve the series until fall. It returns tonight, nearly 10 months after it left off.

Like other freshmen shows cut short last season, "Pushing Daisies" faces the dual challenge of trying to win back its old fans, while trying to woo new ones.

The series focuses on Ned (Lee Pace), a bemused but lonely pie maker with that unique bring-back-the-dead skill. In the series pilot, he revives his childhood sweetheart, Chuck (Anna Friel), a murder victim. Problem is, a second touch brings death, so their love must remain unconsummated despite increasingly creative forms of noncontact contact.

RETAINING THE 'DNA'

Together with money-grubbing detective Emerson Cod (Chi McBride), they win reward money for solving crimes by similarly (if temporarily) reviving other victims to learn how they met their sorry fates.

Along the way, Chuck bakes antidepressants into pies for her eccentric aunts, who believe she's dead; a woman is killed by a scratch-and-sniff book; and a rival candy-store owner, desperately afraid of birds, is out to sabotage the pie man.

The show's unabashed quirkiness was, to worried ABC officials, off-putting. When "Daisies" went back into production in June, some recalibration was in order. "The first part of (this) season was really tough," said Bryan Fuller, the show's creator. "They were like, 'Let's ground the show a little more; it can't be a cartoon. We can't have the show be weird and not get an audience.' And we were like, 'We can't have the show be boring and not get the people back we had last year.' The challenge to me was to make sure the fundamental DNA of the show didn't change."

The pace has been simplified, but happily, an early peek at the new season reveals "Daisies" has not been neutered. The season premiere, titled "Bzzzzzzz," has Chuck going undercover at Betty's Bees, a maker of honey-infused beauty products (think Burt's), where a star "bee girl" company spokeswoman has been stung to death. Morbidly funny special effects are still part of the picture.

CATCHING UP

"Daisies," like its counterparts, opens its second season by reintroducing its premise and characters, but there are plenty of issues that linger. When Ned admits in last season's finale that he had accidentally killed Chuck's father to save his mother (don't ask), the central romance between Ned and Chuck takes a turn.

"They start to question 'How the hell are we going to move on?' " Friel said. "She feels very alienated and alone in the world."

Olive (Kristin Chenoweth), who learned as last season ended that Chuck's "aunt" Lily (Swoosie Kurtz) is really her mother, is sent to a nunnery to protect the secret. And Chuck tries to protect her own secret from her eccentric relatives: that she's still alive.