Poker Face is the sharp week-to-week TV show you’ve been missing

We all love a serial TV show where the mystery extends over a whole season. But what about the opposite?

Poker Face is streaming now. (Photo by: Phillip Caruso/Peacock)

Rian Johnson isn’t trying to reinvent the wheel.

The Oscar-nominated writer and director has playfully injected fresh energy into beloved genres through his work including whodunits Knives Out and Glass Onion, sci-fi thriller Looper and neo-noir mystery Brick.

His movies pop, an alchemical mix of charismatic performances, snappy writing and a sense of fun balanced with smarts. They’re in conversation with the moment, such as Knives Out’s evisceration of old money entitlement.

But for all of their modernity, Johnson isn’t looking to up-end convention. He enthusiastically embraces it.

“I don’t come at it thinking this is some old dusty thing that has to be turned on its head, but to come at it thinking this is a machine that works,” Johnson said. “And if it’s rusty, it’s just a matter of cleaning it up and getting it really running well.

“With any genre, that’s always my approach. Not thinking of it in terms of reinventing it, but thinking in terms of getting back to what works about it in essence and trying to do that as well as I possibly can.”

Rian Johnson with Natasha Lyonne at the Poker Face premiere. Picture: Jon Kopaloff/Getty Images

Johnson’s latest project is Poker Face, a detective TV series starring Natasha Lyonne as Charlie, an itinerant human lie detector. It’s not a whodunit but a how will they be caught.

Charlie moves from place-to-place, coming across murderers who would’ve gotten away with it if she wasn’t unofficially on the case.

Before he was a filmmaker, Johnson was a fan. And that love is what led him to draw on the week-by-week format of classic detective procedurals he watched growing up in the 1970s and 1980s – Columbo, The Rockford Files, Magnum P.I. and also Quantum Leap and The Incredible Hulk.

Poker Face has the thread of a longer arc across the season, but each episode works on its own.

“Those shows were hour-long, case of the week, episodic shows that generally had a really charismatic presence at the centre of them, and great guest stars each week. I miss those shows.

“There’s so much great TV now, and so much of it is serialised where if there’s a mystery, it runs over the whole season or sometimes across multiple seasons. I love that but I missed that episodic thing where you knew you could sit down and get a whole meal in one hour-long episode.

“It was about coming back every week to a familiar format with the same character every single week. There’s something very comforting that I love. It was an attempt to get back to that.”

Poker Face is a week-by-week detective show. Picture: Evans Vestal Ward/Peacock

Especially after seeing Lyonne and Leslye Headland’s biting series Russian Doll, Johnson knew she was someone who could anchor the show. He developed the show with her after mulling the idea over dinner together.

“I don’t watch Columbo for the mysteries. I watch it to hang out with Peter Falk. And I think that’s the secret of those shows, they’re all kind of stealth hangout shows,” Johnson explained.

“And one of the things that’s nice about Charlie is she essentially likes people. She’s sunny and open to the world and curious about people. When you put that together with the natural hard edge that Natasha has, it creates an interesting combination that to me is really watchable.

“It’s a character that is on the side of the little guy and that you can really root for, but still has that edge to them.”

With Lyonne at the centre, the case of the week format allows for many, many great guest stars, some of them in dastardly roles.

Rian Johnson wants his Knives Out star Jamie Lee Curtis to guest star in an episode of Poker Face. Picture: Lionsgate

The first season has a murderers’ row of talent popping in for an episode – Chloe Sevigny, Hong Chau, Adrien Brody, Danielle McDonald, Jameela Jamil, Clea DuVall, Nick Nolte and Judith Light are just the start.

If Poker Face has legs – Columbo ran for 10 seasons – Johnson has a wishlist of guest stars for future episodes. He doesn’t want to share – “Because I’m afraid that I’ll jinx them” – but he will reveal one name.

“I hope that I can entice my friend Jamie Lee Curtis to come and play in one of these, because her first job was on an episode of Columbo way back in the day, playing a waitress. So this would be coming full circle.”

Poker Face is streaming now on Stan