Like a Vegas cocktail waitress with a two-olive martini, Poker Face knew exactly what we wanted and served it up in style, before we’d even put our cards on the table. It’s 2023 and TV viewers are growing tired of morally ambiguous anti-heroes and their convoluted story arcs. We’re done with cinematic ambitions that seem to disdain the small screen they’re on. Give us a good old-fashioned case-of-the-week mystery any day, over yet another “prestige” TV opus.
That said, Poker Face, starring Natasha Lyonne as “human lie detector” Charlie Cale, has credentials to rival any big-ticket production. Rian Johnson, the show’s creator, is a major Hollywood director with a $1bn-grossing Star Wars movie, two Oscar nominations and three of the best Breaking Bad episodes to his name. He’s also the guy who revived the ensemble-cast, Agatha Christie-style whodunnit genre with his movies Knives Out and Glass Onion.
Poker Face is similarly nostalgic, but for a different kind of mystery tale. After going on the run from her casino bosses in a vintage Plymouth Barracuda, Charlie stumbles across a suspicious death in a new corner of the country each week, and uses her special lie-detecting abilities to uncover the truth. Or, as she puts it with characteristic insouciance: “I hear bullshit, I say bullshit … It’s a thing I have.”
These episodes are not whodunnits, but howcatchems – sometimes called “inverted detective stories” – in which the pleasure lies not in guessing the murderer’s identity (that’s usually revealed in the first 15 minutes) but in seeing how the investigation unfolds. In a howcatchem, absent the mystery of the perpetrator to propel the narrative, a charismatic lead is essential. It’s got to be someone quirky enough to be memorable, but amiable enough to be good company for the whole ride.
From 1968 to 2003, that guy was Peter Falk, as the dishevelled LAPD detective Lieutenant Columbo. As Charlie Cale, Lyonne comes off like Columbo’s cool, Xennial niece. She’s an heir so apparent that we’re gonna need to see some DNA evidence before we can conclude they’re not related.
What are the elements that make up this ideal investigator? Lyonne’s raspy New York accent, for one – it’s up there with Puddy from Seinfeld and Bubble from Ab Fab among the greatest TV voices of all time. Then there’s her desert-town dress sense, all fringed waistcoats, flared jeans and Stevie Nicks hair.
This 70s vibe is not coincidental. Rather, like the familiar yellow font of the title sequence, it’s a nod to the classic, case-of-the-week shows that Johnson – and so many of us – grew up watching. Shows like Murder, She Wrote, The Rockford Files, Quantum Leap and, of course, Columbo. Plus Lyonne happens to look particularly good in Elvis shades. If she doesn’t win the outstanding lead actress Emmy in January, I’ll file the lawsuit myself.
Lyonne could probably carry this show on her own, so the fact that she doesn’t is yet more evidence of Poker Face’s jackpot-on-the-slot-machine riches. The guest stars include Lyonne’s old Orange Is the New Black cellie Dascha Polanco as a hotel maid, and her fellow NYC cool kid Chloë Sevigny as a heavy-metal head. Oscar nominees Stephanie Hsu and Hong Chau both play drifters Charlie encounters along the way, while gruff 70s screen legend Nick Nolte pops up as a reclusive VFX specialist. The equally characterful settings range from a Texas barbecue joint and a Tennessee go-kart track to a California retirement community and a Colorado ski lodge.
Passing through all these different Americana subcultures is also part of the Poker Face fun, and with a setup this good, surely Charlie could go on and on and never run out of road? Season two is already commissioned, but just in case Lyonne or Johnson do tire of life on the run, let it be noted that Poker Face is also that rarest of TV phenomenons – a US original that’s ripe for a UK remake. Imagine it: Maxine Peake as fugitive bingo caller, driving up and down the M6 in her Fiat Punto, solving murders as she goes. TV gold!
