This 21st-Century Columbo is a hit
Take a look at any episode of the old detective series Columbo and you’ll see that the title’s yellow letters and font are echoed precisely in Poker Face, created by Rian Johnson. Columbo is its main touchstone, and like its inspiration, Poker Face is sly, easy, escapist fun. But as he did in the character-driven whodunnit films Knives Out and Glass Onion, Johnson has designed this show with a shrewd sense of how to give nostalgia an update. His throwback to murder-of-the-week shows works perfectly well today, although the shambolic hero played by Peter Falk is now a croaky-voiced heroine with wild hair and a mobile phone.
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Natasha Lyonne stars as Charlie, an accidental crime-solver with an unfailing ability to look someone in the eye and know when they’re lying – a handy talent whether you’re gambling at cards, her former profession, or running into murderers at every stop on the road, which is where the series takes her. As in Columbo and plenty of Alfred Hitchcock Presents episodes, we first see the crime take place, and go on to watch how Charlie figures it all out. “The real trick of it is figuring out why, why somebody is lying,” she says.
Lyonne has the same wry sensibility and delivery she has brought to other characters, most recently as the time-shifting heroine in the Netflix series Russian Doll. But intuitive, kind-hearted Charlie may be the most likeable, least acerbic character she has ever played, someone who can wear well over the course of a series. Following the Columbo pattern, she drives a beat-up car and is underestimated by criminals – played by a line -up of guest stars popping in for a single episode – who are taken in by her supposedly innocent, confused questions.
The sleek, involving first episode, written and directed by Johnson, is among the best. The murder happens at a garish Las Vegas-like hotel and casino, and the episode is shot to look like a 1970s television show, with saturated colours and ominous music cues. That playful look works once, then Johnson smartly drops it for more cinematic approaches in later instalments. He knows how far to mimic a formula and when to throw it away. (Other writers and directors take over, starting with episode three.)
When a hotel maid (Dasha Polanco) discovers a horrifying image on a guest’s computer in that first story, she notifies the hotel manager, played with perfect smarminess by Adrien Brody. Establishing the show’s pattern, Charlie turns up about 20 minutes in and the timeline shifts back to before the murder, with scenes telling us why she was around in the first place. Here she turns up as a cocktail waitress wearing a goofy feathered hat.
It’s enough to say that things go wrong and Charlie has to flee, with the casino’s hitman, (Benjamin Bratt) chasing after her. Bratt’s character gives the series its slender continuity and a reason for Charlie to travel around under the radar, taking jobs as a waitress or a cleaner, trying to stay a step ahead of the killer.
The guests are not mega movie stars, but familiar faces. In one episode, Chloe Sevigny, who played Lyonne’s character’s mother in Russian Doll’s flashbacks, stars as Ruby Ruin, a has-been singer in a metal band, now working at a warehouse. She gets the band back together and goes on the road, with Charlie selling their T-shirts. Like the Knives Out mysteries, Poker Face walks the line between straightforward and tongue-in-cheek, but where the films land on the campier side, the series is more invested in its plots. No detail is too small or silly to be a clue or a red herring, including the title of the metal band’s one hit, Staplehead.
Lil Rel Howery plays the co-owner of a Texas barbecue restaurant, whose brother wants to quit the business, saying, “I’m going vegan”. Wit always takes precedence over seriousness here. Someone falls off a roof at a rest stop in New Mexico, where Charlie meets a trucker played by Hong Chau (The Whale). She later works at a retirement home and befriends 1970s radicals gleefully played by Judith Light and S Epatha Merkerson.
One other nostalgic touch: like those old series, Poker Face is not necessarily made to binge. It’s there, ready whenever you feel like a reassuring, cosy mystery that’s more rumpled crime-solver than Miss Marple.
★★★★☆
Poker Face premieres on 26 January on Peacock in the US
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