Special-effects technology can create any illusion. But with so much potential for imaginative brilliance, why do half the shows and movies look like “Knight Rider” (7 p.m., NBC)? Am I the only one tired of watching cars explode?

What if a TV show used all of the technology at its disposal to present something new, different, pleasant and occasionally even charming? The result might look something like “Pushing Daisies” (7 p.m., ABC).

Tonight’s second-season pilot uses a clever title sequence to bring us up to speed on its complicated premise, then plunges right into a clever murder mystery set in a beehive, or rather in the corridors of a honey-based cosmetic empire, complete with its own eye-popping, tongue-in-cheek marketing campaign.

With its rich, saturated palate, visual extravagance and high-concept set and costumes, “Daisies” often resembles one long TV commercial, the product of an advertising art department gone wild.

“Daisies” can get too darned cute, and many of those excesses involve Olive, the jealous waitress played by Kristin Chenoweth. Tonight is no exception, when a subplot sends Olive to a convent, where she lives out a “Sound of Music” fantasy. But even at its most saccharine, “Daisies” is like nothing else on television.

¢ Almost every ghost movie ever made would end in the first act if the characters just had the common sense to get the heck out of the haunted house. Why do they stay? Because it’s a movie, that’s why.

I have the same feelings about Nick (Peter Krause) in the glitzy soap “Dirty Sexy Money” (9 p.m., ABC), now entering its second season. After the mysterious death of his father, Nick takes charge as the family lawyer for the Darlings, the richest, craziest and most destructive family on the Upper East Side. It’s the Kennedys meet the Borgias by way of the Baldwins with a little Lohan on the side. Nick knows these people will corrupt him, seduce his wife and destroy his family. Why doesn’t he just move to New Jersey and get another job?

Krause is great here as a man trying to maintain the moral center in a tornado of depravity. As family patriarch Tripp Darling, Donald Sutherland exudes just the right mix of glib condescension and menace. William Baldwin, for reasons cited above, seems right at home as Patrick Darling. Tonight’s episode features too little of Letitia (Jill Clayburgh). But don’t worry, we’ll be seeing much more of her soon.

¢ “Secrets of the Dead” (7 p.m., PBS) recalls the Crippen case, the “O.J.” trial of 1910. A media firestorm, it was also the first famous trial in which forensic evidence played a key role. But now scientists use new techniques on old evidence to argue that the wrong man went to the gallows.

Tonight’s other highlights

¢ Murder keeps office hours on “Bones” (7 p.m., Fox).

¢ A winner emerges on “America’s Got Talent” (8 p.m., NBC).

¢ Naomi’s secret bookkeeping worries Addison on the second-season premiere of “Private Practice” (8 p.m., ABC).

¢ The documentary “My Fake Baby” (8 p.m., BBC) looks at women who collect and “nurture” lifelike dolls.

¢ “Friday Night Lights” (8 p.m., Direct TV’s Channel 101) returns for a third season. NBC will repeat these episodes at a later date.