One-of-a-kind Lyonne the real deal as throwback PI

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This article was published 11/02/2023 (1314 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

As 21st-century audiences, we’ve become used to the idea of Prestige TV — the big, serious, expensive shows that are routinely described as “complex,” “difficult,” “novelistic,” “cinematic.” But with all those enigmatic narratives stretched out over multiple episodes and seasons, with all those significant details that need to be pored over and analyzed, with all that admirable but exhausting moral ambiguity, you can’t blame viewers who might be feeling a bit prestiged-out.

That’s where Poker Face comes in. (The current 10-episode season is streaming on Citytv+.) Show creator Rian Johnson, the man behind Knives Out and the recent hit Glass Onion, has found inspiration in an unlikely source — episodic network shows from the 1970s and ’80s, which is exactly the kind of basic television programming Prestige TV wanted to leave behind.

Poker Face relies on the “case of the week” format seen in shows like Columbo and Murder, She Wrote, as well as the roving-hero narrative that drove Quantum Leap and The Littlest Hobo. With a touch of irony, some vintage style and a whole lot of sweet sincerity, Johnson calls back to a time when plots were unabashedly formulaic and problems were solved in under an hour.

And it works. In Poker Face the uncool is cool again, and old TV formats somehow feel new.

A lot of that is down to the show’s very distinctive star, Natasha Lyonne (Orange is the New Black, Russian Doll). In Poker Face she’s working a trucker hat/shorts and boots/Stevie Nicks-hair look, which somehow adds up to a blasé sense of chic. She’s also doing her old-Jewish-man shtick, using her raspy smoker’s voice and slightly hunched posture to channel a real Zaida vibe. There’s no one else like her on screen.

Here she plays Charlie Cale, first seen working as a casino cocktail waitress in a Nevada town. Charlie possesses an odd ability to know when someone is lying. (As she points out, that’s not necessarily the same thing as knowing the truth.) With this idiosyncratic superpower, she stumbles and mumbles her way through a different murder investigation every week.

Johnson immediately makes a visual nod to vintage TV. The Columbo references are seen first in the blocky yellow typeface for the opening credits, complete with the copyright date picked out in Roman numerals under the show title. (There are also some things I definitely do not recall from the prime-time network TV of my childhood, including a cheerfully foulmouthed Charlie swearing like a sailor on shore leave, some graphic sex talk and a spot of nudity.)

There’s something reassuring and relaxing about Poker Face’s self-contained standalone episodes. In Prestige TV, mysteries are always teasing us, their ultimate solutions perpetually deferred, Westworld-style, to keep us hanging on for another season. In Poker Face mysteries are there to be solved — and solved right away.

There is a bit of an overarching storyline. Charlie burns some bridges — spectacularly! — in the pilot episode, which means a bad man is after her and she must keep on moving, staying off the grid, picking up odd jobs that pay under the table. But this is basically just an excuse to keep Charlie travelling on, with episodes set at a highway truck stop, an outdoor barbecue joint, a retirement residence, a dinner theatre, a go-kart track. (Johnson’s other unlikely influence might just be Nomadland, the Oscar-winning drama about close-to-the-bone life on the American road.)

As the settings change, so does the cast. On Columbo the rota of guest stars might include William Shatner, Johnny Cash, Faye Dunaway, Janet Leigh or John Cassavetes. Johnson’s fabulously eclectic casting gives us drop-ins from Ellen Barkin, Nick Nolte, Chloe Sevigny, Hong Chau, Lil Rel Howery, Luis Guzman, John Hodgman and the Mountain Goats’ John Darnielle. You never know who might turn up.

Poker Face also follows Columbo by using the so-called inverted murder structure: We see the murder planned and committed and then sit back for the pleasure of watching the detective solve it. With Columbo, the good lieutenant (played by Peter Falk) was there with his crumpled raincoat and ever-present cigar, rambling on about seeming irrelevancies before closing in on his target with his trademark, “Just one more thing….”

The constant here is Charlie. She’s a bit shambly, like Columbo. She’s full of curiosity about the world and its ways, like Columbo. Like him, she can seem incompetent, but she’s tenacious, shrewd and fired by a genuine thirst for justice.

When you see Charlie walking to Liquor Castle in her bathrobe, you might not think she’s a world-class gumshoe. But she gets the job done – and unlike her sad-sack true-detective counterparts in Prestige TV, she gets it done in 50 minutes.

alison.gillmor@freepress.mb.ca