Poker Face is a modern homage to the classic murder-mystery-of-the-week shows which filled those parts of 1970s and 80s television schedules that hadn’t been colonised by soaps about oil tycoons and shoulder-pads. It’s created by Knives Out director Rian Johnson and the gravel-throated Natasha Lyonne, of Orange Is the New Black and Russian Doll fame, stars as the infallible sleuth Charlie, who remains unfazed by the number and regularity of the killings that happen around her. Think of it as Murder, She Rasped.
The main change to the traditional format is that our heroine has an almost preternatural ability to read a person’s body language and deduce whether they are lying or telling the truth. On second thoughts, perhaps you should think of it as Columbo meets The Mentalist, if anyone remembers The Mentalist these days. Anyway, Charlie’s gift is just strong enough to pique her curiosity in any given scenario and help her along the way to solving crimes, but not strong enough for her to do so until at least 45 minutes and sometimes as many as 52 have elapsed and given the weekly guest star reason enough to turn up.
In the opening episode we have Adrien Brody as weaselly Vegas casino manager Sterling, who was given the job by his powerful gangster father and is eager to prove to Daddy he’s got the cojones for it; plus Benjamin Bratt as Cliff, the man who does any necessary wet work for the family firm. When Charlie’s best friend and hotel maid Natalie (fellow OItNB alumna Dascha Polanco) goes to clean a high roller’s room and sees evidence of a heinous (nicely unspecified) crime on his laptop, she quickwittedly snaps a photo of it and leaves. Less quickwittedly, she takes the photo to Sterling and Cliff, who kill her and her husband – usefully known to be violent towards her – and frame him for her murder rather than threaten the casino’s reputation and profits.
Charlie is a waitress at the same establishment. She was given the job by Sterling Sr (voiced unseen at the other end of various phonecalls by Ron Perlman, so you can imagine he’s still in his leonine Beauty and the Beast getup if you want to cross your 80s streams) after he caught her using her gift to win suspiciously consistently at cards, on condition that she – you know, stop doing that. Sterling Jr sees a chance to use her to fleece the big shot at the private poker games which he has been illegally and frankly rudely running from his comped suite instead of spending all his time and money at the proper tables.
Soon Charlie is noting lies, inconsistencies, timelines that don’t match up and concluding – thanks to a left-handed/right-handed shooter clue that is almost courageously basic – that her boss murdered Natalie. She promptly ruins the hotel’s reputation and profits, causing Sterling Sr to promise he will catch and kill her ASAP; Cliff to try it immediately but fail; and Charlie to flee and spend the remaining nine episodes/murders/guest stars (Nick Nolte! Chloe Sevigny! Joseph Gordon-Levitt! Ellen Barkin! Rhea Perlman and John Ratzenberger though not, alas, together!) on the lam.
Each of the nine follows the same format. The crime is committed in the opening portion. The next portion reveals how Charlie earlier became involved in the victim’s life, and the finale, of course, solves the crime and delivers (occasionally unconventional) justice. Sometimes it delivers it in the pleasingly retro manner of an aerial shot of a slew of police sirens converging on a resigned perpetrator’s home. It also lets Charlie leave town just ahead of her remorseless hunter, Cliff.
Some of the self-contained tales are tighter and better-worked than others. Episode four, Rest in Metal, for example, contains a deeply uncharismatic performance from Sevigny as the head of a band searching desperately for a second hit. If I tell you they recruit a starry-eyed and unexpectedly talented young drummer from Craigslist, you will probably be able to predict the rest of the episode, which feels like it was sketched in an especial hurry on the back of a particularly small napkin.
But all the episodes are fun, and working a lighter and more clearly comic scene than Columbo et al. Lyonne is as mesmerising as ever, perhaps all the more so for not being quite as effortfully and obviously turned up to the max as she was at all times in Russian Doll. Charlie lets the audience in, which makes it somehow more feasible that all the people she meets as she bounces around the country connect with her and make it hard, when they are killed or falsely accused, for her to walk away.
A good time – especially if you take it in single doses so your credulity doesn’t risk being overstretched – is there to be had.
Poker Face is on Sky Max in the UK
