Natasha Lyonne’s raspy, rumpled character in Netflix’s Russian Doll has drawn comparisons to Peter Falk’s eponymous detective in Columbo. Her new mystery series, Poker Face, feels all but reverse-engineered from those comparisons by creator Rian Johnson. Sticking strictly to a no-frills case-of-the-week structure, the series even boasts a classical style of presentation, with old-timey opening credits and, despite taking place in the present day, the sort of rich, warm color palette often associated with a period piece.
Through the character of ex-cocktail waitress Charlie Cale, Poker Face gives Lyonne as much runway as possible to rasp and shamble her way through murder mysteries populated by a murderers’ row of guest stars (including Adrien Brody, Benjamin Bratt, Hong Chau, Lil Rel Howery, Chloë Sevigny, John Darnielle, and Ellen Barkin). The structure is perhaps the most overt page taken from the Columbo playbook, with each episode showing us in no uncertain terms who committed a murder. The question here isn’t whodunit but how have the perpetrator(s) erred in such a way that will get them caught by Charlie?
Throughout Power Face, Lyonne doesn’t emit any showy facial or verbal tics to demonstrate precisely how Charlie spots a lie; the series simply asks us to accept that she can always tell, as part of what feels like an intentionally back-to-basics approach to the murder mystery. We don’t, for example, sit through the tortured backstory of Charlie’s lie-detecting prowess or hear her lament how it’s both a gift and a curse. Written and directed by Johnson, the first episode, “Dead Man’s Hand,” even heads off the sort of conflict typically saved for a high-stakes season finale, pitting Charlie against people who know all about her uncanny ability.
The murders that Charlie stumbles upon have, at least in the six episodes made available to press, no apparent connective tissue. The events of the first episode see her going on the run and stepping into the role of a drifter, taking odd jobs and encountering death by pure happenstance. This sets the stage for what’s more or less the “true” hook of Poker Face: Charlie isn’t your prototypical investigator who shows up on the scene after a murder has been committed, as she’s already embedded in the world of each crime.
Each episode begins by showing the lead-up to a murder, after which we flashback to before the crime took place and are invited to Charlie’s point of view, with the character immersed within a setting and interacting with suspects and victims-to-be. It’s a reasonably clever approach—to transform the traditional opening crime of an episodic mystery series into a flash-forward of sorts before going back to underscore detail and add context. As a result, Poker Face ensures that its shifting locales never feel like disposable changes of scenery.
The series, though, doesn’t always strike the right balance between fleshing out a setting and providing a digestible mystery. More than one episode conveys too much information up front and makes Charlie’s sleuthing feel repetitive or perfunctory, while others are weighed down with too many characters. “Dead Man’s Hand” is the tightest, leaning on Charlie’s own history and weaving her into the plot as a participant rather than a bystander by having her cheat at poker.
Occasionally, Poker Face feels as though it’s running up against the fundamental disconnect of its format: that murder is a serious crime that happens to a real person but also a constant vehicle for pure entertainment. One episode even places more emphasis on an injured dog than the dead body at the scene. But in the end, the series is designed to ably coast on Lyonne’s charm as she spars with its myriad guest stars—and on that front it delivers in spades.
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