Zoren: 'Poker Face' with Natasha Lyonne new show worth watching

A drought of sorts has ended.

Most shows I sample for 15 to 20 minutes before I exit with no intention to return.

Few of these shows are outright stinkeroos. Rather, they reinforce the definition of “mediocre.”

A high percentage of programs being streamed are watchable. They just don’t qualify as “grabbers,” shows that entice you to come back for more.

A viewer can have an entertaining day doing random streaming, but a lot of stories and scripts are so similar, there’s little compulsion to tune back.

The situation is so many shows are available on so many outlets, they are bound to fade into one another.

Especially if a ghost, vampire, monster, supernatural being, or Marvel character is involved.

Oh, how novel. The 268th show about a missing child from a well-heeled suburban development.

Ho-hum.

And heigh-ho! I’m off to the next prospect.

Every now and then, a series such as Peacock’s “The Calling,” will invite me to do a full binge.

Then, sometimes, a program such as Paramount’s “Tulsa King” starts promisingly but doesn’t hold up as new episodes emerge.

Last week, Peacock introduced a “grabber,” a show I watched through four episodes, the only ones available at the moment. Six subsequent episodes will air, one each Thursday through March 9.

The show is “Poker Face.” It was created by Rian Johnson, known for the deservedly successful movies, “Knives Out” and “The Glass Onion,” and features many of Johnson’s signature traits.

For instance, each episode so far begins with a murder. We know who was killed, by whom and why.

It isn’t too much information. The excitement of “Poker Face” is not mystery or suspense, although Johnson and his writers create and sustain both. It’s seeing how a drifter who’s neither a police officer or a private detective solves cases by being newsy and observant.

It helps that the drifter, Charlie, is played by Natasha Lyonne, with a style that also “grabs” by being so witty and shrewd at the same time.

Charlie is on the run from the killers she dimed out in the first murder she solves. The guilty are too important in their Nevada gambling town to be prosecuted.

One of them, played by Benjamin Bratt, is on Charlie’s trail, which is why she goes from town to town across Route 66 and why each episode has a different cast.

Johnson’s craft keeps Charlie hidden until the second segment of each “Poker Face.”

Once she appears, the story clock is pushed back to before the murder. In this way, Charlie can meet the victim and the perpetrators before anything fatal is committed.

Once Charlie arrives, you can’t get enough of her or Lyonne.

Charlie seems to fit into any situation and has everyone around her talking to her from the minute she appears.

Lyonne endows her with traits that recall other TV characters.

She sounds like Marge Simpson (voiced on “The Simpsons” by Julie Kavner). She has the manner and pace of Peter Falk’s “Columbo,” usually leaving or about to leave when she turns and asks another question.

By always arriving at the scene of a murder, even though she’s just moving on to escape Bratt and his revenge, Charlie makes you think of Jessica Fletcher from “Murder She Wrote.”

(I remember saying to someone that if Jessica Fletcher was real, and I saw her any place, I’d leave immediately because her presence means someone is going to be killed.)

Then there’s the drifting, having to find a job in each new place, and mingling with the locals, with whom she always gets involved.

That reminds of Richard Kimball in “The Fugitive.”

So you have elements of two great television shows, a reminder of a third, and Marge Simpson’s voice. The all add to “Poker Face’s” entertainment value.

It’s Lyonne who compels you to watch. She sees through cases as if she’s clairvoyant.

She’s not, but she has one handy trait that often trips up the culprits while sparing the innocent: Charlie is a human lie detector. She can tell by instinct if someone is lying.

What’s more, she confronts the malefactors about their perjuries.

One source of suspense in “Poker Face” is if Charlie is going to get killed or hurt by blatantly announcing to someone that he or she is a murderer and responsible for the crime she involved herself in unraveling.

Watching Charlie work is as enjoyable as seeing any Agatha Christie detective on a case.

She is so thoughtful and thorough. Lyonne makes proceedings more fun by being such a natural, uninhibited soul who earns the confidence of everyone around her.
It’s good to finally find a show I can recommend wholeheartedly to a broad base.

No, “Poker Face” is not “Ozark” or “Better Call Saul,” but it’s the best new show in a long while.

Odenkirk and ‘Ginny’

Speaking of “Better Call Saul,” its star, Bob Odenkirk hasn’t wasted any time in finding his next series.

It’s called “Lucky Hank.” It’s a comedy, and it debuts on Thursday, March 9 on AMC, after which it will stream on Hulu.

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Bob Odenkirk in “Better Call Saul.” (COURTESY OF AMC)

Odenkirk, in the company of co-star Kyle MacLachlan, gives me confidence that dims a little by Odenkirk playing an English professor and department head at a small college.

I worry that’s a formula for cliché or, worse, that it will invite scenes like the one that tempted me to hit the exit button while screening Netflix’s current chart-topper, “Ginny and Georgia.”

That scene involved Ginny, an outspoken and precocious high school student, challenging an English class syllabus because it featured mostly male authors.

The audience was supposed to be on Ginny’s side, but I picked up the remote waiting for the next strike to move on.

I didn’t find the scene contemporary and worthy. I thought it was trendy and pandering.

I said, “Follow the course, and read what you want on your own.”

Ah, well, activists know they won’t get much support or sympathy from me.

‘1619 Project’

I wasn’t going to watch Hulu’s six-part documentary about Nikole Hannah-Jones’ “1619 Project.”

In fact, I was determined to avoid it on purpose.

I’d read the piece when it first appeared in The New York Times Magazine in the summer of 2019 and was disturbed by the manipulation of history I found.

I always say facts may be facts, but they turn into something else when someone uses them to draw conclusions.

That was the flaw I found in Hannah-Jones’ thesis and in the introduction to her article.

Intentions gave way to curiosity.

And to the idea I couldn’t very well denigrate the show if I didn’t know how it was presenting Hannah-Jones’ material.

I found a series that was less strident and less rankling that the magazine piece.

In the first installment — two are available, with four more due — Hannah-Jones concentrates on families, including her own, and their lineage from past generations that served as the property of others.

Some of this is interesting as people visit the places in which their ancestors were enslaved.

Hannah-Jones continues to contend that 1619, the year she says the first African slaves were brought to America, should be considered the nation’s founding year, but that contention runs contrary to history.

She delves into race relations. Sometimes heavy-handedly, and spouts some maxims that seem more a collection of words, a neat phrase if you will, instead of a concrete fact.

I don’t know that I will continue to watch “The 1619 Project,” but I was relieved to find passages of general interest, less absolute statement of what is actually opinion, and some soft-pedalling on 1619 as a date of national origin.

Accolades for report

I rail so much at times about the blandness and similarity of local newscasts, I need to commend an enterprise story that addressed a serious subject, one critical to safe and healthy living in Philadelphia, while introducing a program that is having some effect in drug-ridden Kensington.

On Tuesday, Channel 3 anchor Jessica Kartalija left the desk to do a detailed story on Sarah Laurel, who began an organization, Savage Sisters, that directly serves the addicted found on Kensington streets.

Laurel made the interesting observation that many of the addicted, while congregating in Kensington, are not from the area but come from nearby suburbs — including Delaware, Montgomery, Bucks and Chester counties — to find drugs and roost, often sick and in a decrepit state, in local sidewalks and parks.

One danger Kartalija and Laurel emphasize is xylazine, a veterinary sedative the reporter says is found in 90% of the area’s dope supply.

Xylazine, Kartalija warns, is a legal, inexpensive and easy-to-obtain horse tranquilizer that is mixed with opioids, such a fentanyl and heroin. It can cause human skin to decompose.

Laurel points that out as one of the ongoing problems Savage Sisters face in treating the affected in her neighborhood.

Kartalija’s piece can be seen online. A transcript of it is also available at www.cbsnews.com/philadelphia.

Once upon a time, when local news was more competitive, and the stations looked more avidly for stories they could break, segments like Kartalija’s appeared on a regular basis.

Now they are rare, but as Shakespeare tells us, “when they seldom come they wished-for come.”

Kartalija’s story on Laurel, Savage Sisters, and the xylazine crisis, is the type of reporting of which we need to see more.

Changing of the guard

Joe DeCamara, Jon Ritchie and James Seltzer have announced their new morning program on WIP (94.1 FM) will begin on Monday, Feb. 20.

That is when retiring 6 to 10 a.m. host Angelo Cataldi officially relinquishes his hold on morning sports.

Joining DeCamara, Ritchie and Seltzer from Cataldi’s show is Rhea Hughes.

Al Morganti will concentrate more on his specialty, ice hockey, and the local NHL team, the Flyers.

Morganti will be found on various shows throughout WIP’s schedule.