Rian Johnson Shared The First Teaser For His Peacock Series Poker Face
Rian Johnson is returning to the small screen with Peacock's original series "Poker Face." The accomplished director's TV bonafides were cemented in the final season of AMC's landmark drama, "Breaking Bad." Johnson directed several episodes, most notably "Fifty-One" (which chronicled Walter White's embattled 51st birthday, as well as the anniversary of his cancer diagnosis) and "Ozymandias" — an intense episode that began with Walter embodying the titular statue as his brother-in-law, Hank, is shot dead.
"Poker Face" appears to be much lighter in both tone and content. Described by Johnson as "an old school case-of-the-week mystery series," the recently released trailer traffics in the same snappy, macabre comedy of his career-defining piece, "Knives Out." All ten episodes of the series will be released on NBC's streaming service, Peacock, in January of 2023 (per Deadline). Though Johnson's fans have the "Knives Out" sequel "Glass Onion" to look forward to in the immediate future, they can't be faulted for already setting their sights on this arresting new crime dramedy.
Who shows up in the Poker Face trailer?
The trailer opens with Adrien Brody's character, who appears to be a catalyzing agent for the series' lead Charlie Cale (played by Natasha Lyonne). "I only know if something is a lie," says Cale, presumably an expert poker player with a nigh-supernatural talent for reading her opponents. "The real trick of it is to figure out, 'why?'" (a philosophy pleasantly reminiscent of Fox's "Lie to Me"). We then see a few quick shots of actors in the series, including Dascha Polanco and Ron Perlman.
Lil Rey Howery of "Get Out" gets quite a bit of screen time in the short teaser as a suspiciously dismissive southern man with a working shotgun hanging on his wall. A quick shot of a blade is shown before Joseph Gordon-Levitt is seen holding his hands up in surrender in front of a snowy landscape. A woman is seemingly fatally wounded as she falls down, though it's too fast to tell who it is exactly — her voice and hair resemble Jameela Jamil's, but it's impossible to say for sure. Tim Meadows — who appears to be in some kind of uniform — watches in horror. This fast-paced first look at Johnson's new series already delivers on the sort of mystery high jinks audiences have come to expect and enjoy from his "Knives Out" series, proving that Johnson is far from through with this genre.