The brand new murder-comedy Poker Face (on Peacock now) performs a really harmful sport certainly. It walks proper as much as the road of smugness, of tweeness—possibly it even places a toe over the sting right here and there—earlier than it pulls again. The present is constructed, in some methods, as a testomony to its personal cleverness. Which needs to be irksome, and but largely isn’t. That’s a credit score to the present’s creator, Rian Johnson, this 12 months finest identified for writing a directing Glass Onion, and to its salty star, Natasha Lyonne, who wears the present’s quirky, haunt vitality like a snug classic go well with.
Lyonne performs Charlie, a Nevada on line casino dweller with a particular reward: she will be able to at all times inform when somebody is mendacity. She as soon as used that to her benefit in playing, however now she’s attempting to remain on the straight and slim—minus all of the booze and cigarettes. However, after all, malfeasance finds her, and Charlie has to go on the lam, holding one or two steps forward of her pursuer, performed by Benjamin Bratt. As Charlie drives throughout America, working odd jobs, she retains stumbling into homicide mysteries, which she solves utilizing her distinctive powers of deduction.
I say mysteries, however they’re probably not that. A minimum of to not us within the viewers. Like its apparent inspiration, Columbo, Poker Face reveals us who did the homicide proper from the leap. Every episode introduces us to a brand new crime and a brand new solid of visitor stars—bored twentysomethings working a relaxation cease in the midst of nowhere, scheming older girls at a retirement group, a barbecue grasp who’s had a change of coronary heart about cooking meat and needs to go vegan. The present could be a bit flippant about all of the loss of life that Charlie encounters, however it does take its characters severely. Or, at the very least, it addresses them totally.
Poker Face has an inviting, humane demeanor. Charlie could be prickly at instances, a bit of impolite, a bit blunt. However for essentially the most half, she’s a sort individual, cool and respectable in the way in which that acknowledges coolness and decency in others and thrives off that widespread vitality. Her unassuming air makes her a shocking detective, which in the end proves vexing to the various murderers with whom she crosses paths.
The solid of killers and killed is an fascinating olio of acquainted faces. Chloë Sevigny performs the laid-low lead singer of a one-hit-wonder band, determined to return to the glow of fame and success. Judith Mild and S. Epatha Merkerson play former Nineteen Sixties radicals now caught within the mundanity of their twilight years. Newly minted Oscar nominee Hong Chau performs a pleasant trucker, Ellen Barkin and Tim Meadows are pale TV stars nonetheless nursing outdated grudges. Everybody appears to relish the chance to mess around in Johnson’s oddball little world. Ought to Poker Face get a second season, it would in all probability don’t have any hassle getting visitor stars.
My hope, although, can be that the present maintains its modest scale. The primary season, or at the very least the six episodes I’ve seen, has a satisfying shagginess. It’s slickly made, however not haughty about it. That’s a fragile vibe, one that might simply be disrupted by an excessive amount of self-impressed showboating. A little bit of that’s already current—“Look how ingenious this writing is,” the present generally appears to say as Charlie goes about unraveling the intricacies of a case. Any extra preening flash would throw the entire thing out of whack.
As is, although, Poker Face is groovy leisure. It’s fairly trustworthy to its case-of-the-week format, eradicating any strain to recollect mythology or, actually, even character names. It’s simple to observe, to dive out and in of, which is rarer in at the moment’s TV panorama than it needs to be. That’s all a part of Johnson’s throwback intent, and but he retains the present freed from an excessive amount of cloying nostalgia. (The retro opening titles within the pilot really feel a bit stale, although, so a few years after Jackie Brown.) In comparison with Glass Onion, Johnson’s over-adorned 2022 movie, Poker Face is restrained in its references. It’s much less reactive to cultural discourse, although there are many amusing, well timed allusions.
Lyonne is an actor maybe uniquely suited to the job of Poker Face, to holding one foot within the cozy previous and the opposite within the up to date zeitgeist. As Charlie, she feels each contemporary and acquainted without delay, an outdated pal who you’ve by no means seen earlier than. That high quality serves this peripatetic present fairly properly. Lyonne is a useful fixed because the our bodies fall, and that’s the reality.
