Poker Face
Sky Max| ★★★★✩
I was late from work and needed something to watch so I could unwind as I ate my Uber Eats before passing out. Poker Face on Sky Max was not that show.
In fact, while searching for something to watch I kept pointedly scrolling past it, until the food got cold — even though I’m a big fan of its eminently watchable lead Natasha Lyonne, the Russian doll of Russian Doll.
I’m even a mostly fan of the series creator Rian Johnson. The scars from Last Jedi may still be tender, but Looper and Brick are both excellent.
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Trump cards: Joseph Gordon-Levitt, Charles Melton and Natasha Lyonne in Poker Face (Photo: Peacock TV)
And the director’s Knives Out films? That’s why I finally ended up settling on Guardians of the Galaxy Vol 2: I suspected more was going to be asked of me than I presently had to give.
The next morning though, properly rested, I decided to go for it — only to discover that my instinct had been correct. You have to bring your A game to this show for it is a murder mystery, with the crime taking place at the beginning of each episode, and our aforementioned protagonist huskily working her magic to catch the culprits.
And we’re talking actual magic, or close to, here as Natasha’s character Charlie possesses the supernatural ability to tell if someone’s lying. In the first episode she’s introduced as a cocktail waitress.
It was her consolatory prize after a casino owner discovered her using her power to cheat — at his casino. If her best friend hadn’t been murdered she may well have been reasonably content to spend the rest of her life delivering drinks and consuming them, for as she observes: “Being rich is better than being broke, harder than being just fine.”
Adrien Brody, the owner’s son, has different ideas though. He’s the first in a line of special guest actors — my personal favourites Ellen Barkin and Nick Nolte show up in later episodes— to start a chain of events that lead to Charlie going on the lam for the rest of the series.
Subsequently, her truth-telling, combined with her charm and street smarts, mean as she finds herself enmeshed in someone’s demise, she doggedly seeks the truth of what happened. Even if it means putting her own safety further at risk.
Many have invoked Columbo as an inspiration here, and stylistically there’s a Seventies tinge, with each of the ten episodes meticulously directed to be as much a mini-movie as a TV show.
But a more apt comparison would be Elliott Gould’s portrayal of Philip Marlow in The Long Goodbye. Charlie isn’t doing this as a job, she’s driven by justice. She also delivers a less affected more naturalistic version of the bumbling, mumbling, muttering detective archetype, before POW, dropping the killer blow.
Arguably, it’s this performance choice that saves the show from itself, by which I mean Johnson’s writing.
He’s clever. And, boy, does he not mind you knowing it. As such, as the clues are dropped, the artifice of the entire structure doesn’t feel quite as forced as it does when combined with Daniel Craig’s forced Benoit Blanc in the overhyped Knives Out.
Poker Face may show its cards, but still has a winning hand.
Unless, of course, you think I’m lying.
