Even before its arrival, Rian Johnson’s new TV series Poker Face was being compared to the classic detective drama Columbo. A new piece of fan art has created the perfect crossover between the two shows. Natasha Lyonne stars in Poker Face as a human lie detector who has to prove each week the culprit using her uncanny abilities. Like the Columbo mysteries, the show is more about watching how Lyonne’s character unravels the case rather than the show building up to a whodunit-style reveal, which is pretty unique in modern TV detective shows.

Rian Johnson shared a piece of fan art by Readful Things that brings together Lyonne’s Charlie and the inspiration that is Peter Falk’s Lieutenant Columbo. You can check out the piece below.

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Poker Face is one of the most unique series in the crime genre to come along for several years, and with the ever-engaging Lyonne in the lead, it is a winning formula that, along with Knives Out and Glass Onion’s success, makes Rian Johnson a king of the detective story. The series debuted with a perfect critics score on Rotten Tomatoes, and even though that has slipped just slightly to 98%, it still puts the series above the likes of The Last Of Us, Wednesday, and The White Lotus.

Rian Johnson’s Love of Character-Driven Stories Makes His Mysteries So Intriguing

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While many detective and police procedural shows aim their focus on the crime and the solving of it, Johnson has managed to turn the focus on the detective in both his Benoit Blanc movies and now with Poker Face. As he recently explained, it is all about making audiences want to “hang out” with the characters. He said:

Along with many older movie franchise returns, Johnson could have also instigated the return of some old-fashioned TV formats. With Poker Face receiving the kind of reviews that any new show would love to have, it seems likely that the series will be back for another season at some point in the future, and for fans of the genre, that will be welcome news when it comes.

“More than that though, the great characters like James Garner as Rockford or Tom Selleck as Magnum Pi or Falk as Columbo—those shows were more hangout shows than anything else. You didn’t really tune in for the mystery. You tuned in to hang out with Falk. And so when I became friends with Natasha and realized she could be that for a show, I got really, really excited. That’s where the whole thing started. And I just kept coming back and hammering the notion that all the shows that I grew up watching were not about the cliffhanger at the end. They were about wanting to come back to hang out with this character that you love and see them win, and that’s equally addictive. And it’s also something I miss, and I bet a lot of people also miss.”