As an introduction, it has everything: sharp intrigue, familiar stylistic tics, a promised peek into the murk of human iniquity.Īnd this is all before Lyonne arrives playing Charlie Cale, as buoyant as a Labrador-if Labradors smoked and drank and holed up in rusty trailers in the Nevada desert with elderly Elvis impersonators for company.
Inside the presidential suite, a maid (played by Dascha Polanco) sees something on a guest’s laptop screen and freezes in horror. The creak of a service trolley and the hallucinatory swirls of a carpet evoke a sense of low-grade panic. The new, impeccably credentialed Peacock series, from the director Rian Johnson ( Glass Onion, Knives Out) and the actor and writer Natasha Lyonne ( Russian Doll), begins in the hallway of a Las Vegas hotel. What I tend to want in a crime drama is to be enveloped in atmosphere from the very first frame, and on that count, Poker Face delivers.
