Natasha Lyonne’s ‘Columbo’ Is More Fun Than Ever

Poker Face is a murder-of-the-week procedural in an overtly Columbo vein. But Rian Johnson and Natasha Lyonne‘s modern-day all-star throwback loves movies almost as much as it adores TV, peppering its action with so many references and homages to classic films that it’s shocking every entry isn’t preceded by the Criterion Assortment brand.

An auteurist spirit guides this intensely entertaining Peacock affair, and in its second season, premiering Might 8, it hits much more highs than throughout its maiden run, offering an assortment of homicidal tales which can be as idiosyncratic as its heroine, a “human lie detector” whose capability to inform when folks aren’t being trustworthy is its sleuthing hook. Previous-school tv isn’t as contemporary and humorous—and cinematic—as this episodic thriller.

Poker Face isn’t a whodunit however a “howcatchem,” with installments starting with prologues that reveal the identification, and strategies, of their killer earlier than flashing again to element how Charlie Cale (Lyonne)—a drifter with a present for deducing who’s being truthful, and who instinctively calls “bullshit” when somebody isn’t—unravels the conspiracy.

Cruising the nation in her 1969 Plymouth Barracuda, and with “a voice like a rusty trombone,” she’s a nomadic millennial Hercule Poirot, and if her acuity is a fantastical superpower that often appears like a too-easy cheat, permitting her to resolve crimes just by listening to a perpetrator inform a fib, it’s nonetheless creatively employed all through every of its twelve chapters.

As soon as once more, these are populated by stars massive and small, with the present balancing its A-listers with a bevy of wonderful supporting gamers—Kevin Corrigan, Brendan Sexton III, and I Suppose You Ought to Go away‘s Patti Harrison—who’ve lengthy energized off-beat and unbiased initiatives.

Lyonne is the solar round which all the pieces in Poker Face revolves, and he or she’s brighter than ever in its sophomore run, sarcastically rambling from one state—and group, and tradition—to a different with wry take-it-as-it-comes nonchalance and good humor.

Charlie is a task so completely constructed for the actress’ witty ragamuffin cool that it by no means looks as if she’s giving a efficiency (a not-inconsiderable feat). She’s in wonderful type as she hits the street within the premiere, trying to scrape by through no matter odd job she will land whereas concurrently evading the goons despatched by mob boss Beatrix Hasp (Rhea Perlman) to complete her off.

Beatrix’s pursuit of Charlie is the only serialized thread tethering the early motion, and it’s a considerably distracting one, lending the fabric a chronology it doesn’t want. Happily, it’s dropped after its third story—which, by the way, is the season’s sole stumble, largely as a result of, regardless of the participation of John Mulaney and Richard Sort, it abandons its tried-and-true template of presenting a homicide after which rewinding to depict novice gumshoe Charlie cracking the case.

Poker Face commences with a gem about quadruplets who made a mint as baby actors on a goofy TV cop present, solely to be screwed out of their fortune by a stage mom (Jasmine Man) who, on her deathbed, intends to go away her tens of millions to a heretofore-unknown fifth equivalent baby. Led by a terrific Cynthia Erivo as all 5 siblings, it’s an amusing delight that permits the Depraved headliner to go daring and simply the correct quantity of cartoonish.

It units a suitably formidable tone that’s maintained all through the following chapters, through which Charlie finds herself knee deep in deadly hassle at a funeral dwelling run by a director (Giancarlo Esposito) with an sad spouse (Katie Holmes), a minor league baseball stadium whose former prospect (Simon Rex) is determined to reclaim his 100 mph fastball, and a New York Metropolis bar that’s dwelling to a crew of con males led by a grifter (John Cho) who has his eyes on a alternative mark (Melanie Lynskey).

In every of its mini-dramas, Poker Face grants its visitor stars plentiful possibilities to shine, all because it retains its deal with Charlie and her preternatural talent at detecting falsehoods and arising with the right one-liner to chop an individual (or state of affairs) right down to dimension.

Its episodes are wildly distinctive, confidently imagining a variety of American milieus and their wacko inhabitants. Of these new narratives, the perfect takes place in essentially the most unlikely of locales: a suburban preparatory faculty the place Charlie, working because the Sloppy Joe-ladling lunch girl, is pitted towards a conniving elementary faculty striver whose starvation for classroom gold stars leads her to sabotage the talent-show efficiency of her rival—a saga that hilariously entails loss of life, blackmail, and fairly a number of psychotically intimidating adolescent threats.

Everybody in Poker Face does top-shelf work, be it Sam Richardson as a giant field retailer worker who, upon being fired by his boss (Corey Hawkins), decides to make use of his heist-movie script as a blueprint for an actual crime, or Kumail Nanjiani as a Tiger King-esque Florida panhandle cop often called Gator Joe who—a lot to the chagrin of Gaby Hoffmann‘s up-and-up police officer—keeps winning law enforcement awards thanks to his partnership with a pet croc named Daisy and the catchphrases (“Gator done!”) that have made him an energy drink-promoting social media sensation.

The series doesn’t boast a foul flip from its illustrious solid, and its mysteries are constantly creative. They’re additionally embellished with copious shout-outs to celluloid favorites, whether or not through rat-a-tat-tat quips (corresponding to Charlie quoting Linda Manz from Dennis Hopper’s Out of the Blue) or a confidence-game plot that playfully echoes David Mamet’s Home of Video games.

Poker Face comes out of the gate like a Triple Crown winner after which maintains its stride all through, giving Charlie a brand new CB radio pal (Steve Buscemi) with whom she will chat about her escapades, and discovering unconventional methods to make use of its acquainted faces, corresponding to Clifford “Method Man” Smith as a Brooklyn health club proprietor who’s preserving his enterprise afloat by promoting “the good stuff” to his swole clientele.

Irrespective of the place it’s organising store, the sequence is sharp and guaranteed, spinning tangled yarns through which murder is the inevitable byproduct of jealousy, greed, resentment, and fury, and to an excellent better extent than earlier than, it freely strikes between venues with out shedding a touch of its distinctive persona. With Lyonne on the helm, it’s a rollicking street journey which proves that there’s nonetheless loads of life left in time-honored big- and small-screen formulation.