Marcel Winatschek

The Pie Maker

This show about a pie maker with the ability to bring dead things back to life shouldn’t work. Everything’s too pretty, too strange, all oversaturated colors and deadpan narration and a tenderness that has no business existing in network television. But it does work. It reminds me of Big Fish, that specific baroque excess that actually means something, and Amélie’s obsessive love of small useless beautiful things.

What got me was how it felt like remembering something that never happened. Whimsy that doesn’t apologize. You watch it once and you understand exactly what the creator cares about, and suddenly you care about it too.

It got cancelled, obviously. Networks don’t know what to do with things this weird and this soft. Too specific, too much integrity, doesn’t fit. But someone made it anyway. Spent this much care on set design and color and casting someone with the right sad eyes. That matters even after it’s gone.