When a series with outstanding talent and good reviews premieres in the United States but is left without a release date in Spain, one feels that one suddenly lives in the nineties, when the channels took acquisitions calmly and there were episodes or directly series that they remained unprecedented on this side of the Atlantic due to a lack of confidence. Poker face was one of these. It is created by Rian Johnson, fashionable after the success of Puñales por el espalda, and starring and produced by Natasha Lyonne, Woody Allen actress, revived by Orange is the new black and author of a cult series like Russian doll. And, after remaining in limbo of the unpublished series since January, when it began to be broadcast in the US, it has announced that it will arrive in these parts.
The platform that owns the rights to Poker face is SkyShowtime, which from September will broadcast the first season made up of 10 episodes (and which is renewed for a second). The protagonist is Charlie Cale (Lyonne) who has a gift that can sometimes be a curse: he always knows when someone is lying. And, when her co-worker is found murdered at her home in a Las Vegas casino, this ability leads her to investigate the case, at least realizing that she has people around her who are lying. for reasons unknown to her.
The interesting thing about the proposal is how classic Poker face is. It moves on horseback between detective Colombo, Murder has been written, the love for television and road movies, and a modern and respectful revision of the audiovisual of the last decades of the 20th century. And why these references? From the detective played by Peter Falk, it takes the episodic structure: the viewer witnesses the murder at the beginning of each installment and then must see how Charlie discovers the truth. And from the writer of Angela Lansbury, she has the construction of spaces for each episode and that ingenuity that a normal and ordinary citizen finds an unforeseen homicide wherever the car stops.
The name of Johnson and Lyonne also allows the actors linked to each episode to be consistent with its status as a cool work. They are Adrien Brody, Cherry Jones, Chloë Sevigny, Clea DuVall, Dascha Polanco, Jameela Jamil, Hong Chau, Joseph Gordon-Levitt, Nick Nolte, Ellen Barkin, Rhea Perlman, Ron Perlman, Simon Helberg, Judith Light, Tim Blake Nelson or Stephanie Hsu among many others. And, by offering different cases and contexts in each episode, it allows itself the luxury of giving genuine and surprising adventures and different perspectives in each episode.
With a grainy image, an exercise is allowed as dramatic as it is nostalgic for horror movies of series B, a kind of Fargo on the mountain or the claim of goodness in deep America. It is an unexpected, consistent piece of work that Lyonne puts together perfectly and turns anecdotes into true displays of talent. It is paradoxical that, after having written Puñales por el espalda where the secondary characters remained in flat eccentricities, here this parade of personalities is all authenticity.
Poker face, moreover, has been recognized by the latest Emmy Award nominations, although perhaps it deserved more. She has four nominations: best actress in a comedy for Lyonne, guest actress for Judith Light, production design and expert action coordination.
