Starring Lyonne as Charlie, a “human lie detector” who uses her ability to sniff out bullshit to serve as TV’s least likely detective, Poker Face is packed with homages to the great ’70s and ’80s detective shows of yore. It’s a short montage of three songs and it’s incredibly funny.The Pitch: In the spring of 2020, a Twitter conversation began about who might be the best person to lead a reboot of iconic detective series Columbo, and while Mark Ruffalo was mentioned as an obvious contender, a galaxy brain-level thought emerged: What about Russian Doll’s Natasha Lyonne? Lyonne herself seemed very on board, and while that specific resurrection of IP never happened, just three years later we have Poker Face, created by Glass Onion helmer Rian Johnson - an original mystery drama packed with nostalgia for what came before, with its own special modern flair. The one that grabbed him was ‘Frankly Franklin,’ which was a rip-off of ‘Hamilton, about Benjamin Franklin. She put together a whole series of plays and Rian loved them. Angela Parrish is an incredibly funny writer. My suggestion was to bring in a songwriter. “We had an interesting and unique situation where we had a montage that was going to be all these famous musical numbers from ‘The Wiz’ and ‘Cats.’ Clearing those songs is obscenely expensive and we would need a grant of rights from the writers of those musicals.

“The Frankly Franklin Medley” by Angela Parrish Who would have thought that would be the song to put in there? There’s a beautiful raw genius to it.”

It’s another example of why Rian is such a joy to work with. They’re so charming and so fun, and it feels random, but it feels great. The trickiest one, that I have a personal soft spot for, is Ngozi Family’s ‘Hold On,’ which shows up twice in the episode and closes it out. “The episode’s editor, Shaheed Qaasim and Rian filled ‘Time of the Monkey’ with Rian’s favorite obscure songs.

Poker face show theme song