Meet the new Columbo. She’s Charlie Cale, a self-deprecating, quick-witted, straight-shooting woman who favors oversized sunglasses and old baseball caps as she tools across the country in her beat-up 1969 Plymouth Barracuda, picking up temporary jobs while always looking over her shoulder because she is wanted for a crime she did not commit.
That sounds more like “The Fugitive” — what’s the Columbo part? Glad you asked! Showrunner Rian Johnson (“Star Wars: The Last Jedi,” “Knives Out”) and executive producer-writer-star Natasha Lyonne have fashioned a premise in which every time Charlie lands a new job, it’s only a matter of time before someone is murdered. And because Charlie has a unique set of skills, she’s able to solve the case just before the hourlong episode ends and it’s time for Charlie to hit the road again, where a new adventure undoubtedly awaits.
With Lyonne putting her unique, screen-popping, boundless charisma to great use, a series of famous “guest villains” lending their talents to each new episode, and crackling writing, “Poker Face” is a brilliant throwback to old-school episodic shows such as the aforementioned classics as well as “Quantum Leap,” “The Rockford Files,” “Magnum P.I.” and “Murder, She Wrote.” (The opening title graphics even have a distinctly 1970s/1980s vibe.)
“Poker Face” isn’t a whodunit, it’s what they call a “howcatchem,” in that we know who committed the crime — and then we sit back and enjoy watching as Charlie figures out who the culprit is and nails the killer(s) in deeply satisfying fashion. You think you can outwit Charlie because she’s a “nobody” living out of her car and working a temporary, menial labor job? That was your first mistake, bud!
The pilot episode, which runs 1 hour and 7 minutes, is so strong it could have been stretched another half-hour and released as a feature film. It opens in Tarantino-esque fashion (there’s even a scene from “Pulp Fiction” playing on a TV), with Dascha Polanco playing Natalie, a housekeeper at the Frost Casino and Hotel who makes a shocking discovery in a high roller’s suite and reports it to management — which leads to the murders of Natalie and her boyfriend. We then flash back to the events leading up to the killings and meet Lyonne’s Charlie, who is working as a cocktail waitress at the casino and is close friends with Natalie.
Adrien Brody is in prime slickster form as Sterling Frost Jr., who operates the casino under the still-formidable shadow of his retired father. Sterling has become aware of Charlie’s past as poker player with an almost supernatural ability to discern who’s telling the truth and who’s lying — a skill set that got Charlie banned from every game around. Charlie never cheated, mind you; she can simply look at you and listen to you, and she’s better than any polygraph. Sterling enlists Charlie’s help to take down a “whale,” i.e., a huge gambler, for six figures — but as Charlie spends time with Sterling and his head of security/fix-it man Cliff (Benjamin Bratt), she becomes convinced these two are responsible for the murder of Natalie and her boyfriend. Before the episode is over, Natalie is on the run to the sounds of “Junior’s Farm” by Paul McCartney and Wings, and off we go.
This is the formula for each of the six episodes provided to critics. We see a murder unfurl, usually in small-town America, and we’re a good 15 minutes or so into the story before Charlie appears on the scene in a flashback that starts a day or two before the crime is committed. In “The Stall,” Lil Rel Howery is a huckster named Taffy Boyle who runs an outdoor, tented Texas barbecue joint and also hosts a local radio show called “BBQ and A,” haha. When Taffy’s brother George (Larry Brown) turns up dead, authorities call it a suicide — but it’s Taffy’s bad luck that Charlie has just started working at Boyle’s BBQ.
In another episode, Chloe Sevigny kills as a heavy metal singer who had one hit 20 years ago and will resort to anything, including murder, to recapture the magic. Too bad Charlie was recently hired to sell merch for the band. And in an elaborate and borderline campy ep titled “Exit Stage Death,” Tim Meadows and Ellen Barkin are terrific as washed-up actors who starred in a popular TV series called “Spooky and the Cop” (he was a detective, she was a medium) and are getting back together teaming up for a one-night performance of a play titled “Ghosts of Pensacola” — but it’s all just a ruse to commit murder, which they might have gotten away with had not Charlie been recently hired to work in the kitchen at the dinner theater.
If it seems like I’m giving away too much here, remember: “Poker Face” is a howcatchem, not a whodunit. When a familiar face pops up (the roster of guest stars also includes Stephanie Hsu, Judith Light, Tim Blake Nelson, Ron Perlman, S. Epatha Merkerson, Joseph Gordon-Levitt and Nick Nolte, among others), it means they’re playing either a killer or a victim. The beauty part is watching the amazing Natasha Lyonne’s Charlie puzzle out the crime in clever and often hilarious fashion. Charlie might not even think of herself as a sleuth, but the likes of Lt. Columbo and Miss Marple would be proud.
