The Itinerant Investigator

I’m slowly working my way through the quirky new TV mystery series Poker Face, which debuted in late January on the NBC-owned streaming service Peacock—and was renewed just last week for a sophomore season. In case you’ve been confined to a cave for the last few months, and know nothing about this program from Knives Out writer-director Rian Johnson, let me tell you that it stars Natasha Lyonne (Russian Doll) as Charlie Cale, a goodhearted, chain-smoking ex-poker champion with the uncanny and apparently flawless ability to recognize when somebody is lying to her face.

After solving a suspicious death at a mid-grade casino—much to the chagrin of its crooked management—she has fled to the open road in her exhausted Plymouth Barracuda, hoping to remain under the radar and one step ahead of that gambling joint’s remorseless security chief (played by Law & Order’s Benjamin Bratt), who’s been sent to silence her—permanently. She now drifts across the United States, taking odd jobs and untangling elaborate murders, sometimes in riotous fashion. Think of this show as part The Fugitive, part Columbo. “The series is a ‘how catch ’em’ rather than a whodunit,” explains Tor.com, “with each episode starting out with us seeing how a specific murder was actually carried out. Once the murder is committed, we first see how Charlie happens to be in the area of said murder, and then get to gleefully watch as she unravels who committed the crime …”

Charlie Cale is the classic outsider snoop, drawn into a continuing string of crimes involving characters she doesn’t know, and compelled to puzzle out solutions after careful study of the suspects and circumstances. Unlike Columbo, most of the misdeeds in this hour-long drama don’t involve privileged folk, but instead has-beens, dead-enders, and people riding the fringes of society. Lyonne’s messy-maned sleuth (a self-avowed “dumb-ass”) fits in perfectly. When asked by Collider’s Christina Radish how she and Johnson developed her protagonist, Lyonne answered: “We knew that we wanted her to be a cousin of Philip Marlowe. By that, I mean the Elliott Gould/[Robert] Altman Marlowe (in The Long Goodbye). We knew that she should feel a little bit more Jeff Bridges as The Dude in The Big Lebowski than Lou Reed. Usually, my characters skew more Lou and less Dude, but The Dude has more sun on his back. I also knew that I wanted to be Gene Hackman from the Night Moves era, as opposed to Popeye Doyle. Those were the tent poles, which I worked around. I think more about, ‘Which male actor from the ’70s should I steal from,’ and less about, ‘Should my character wear hoop earrings or studs?’”

I have made it only through Episode 7 so far, but Poker Face has already served up an immodest wealth of guest stars, among them Adrien Brody, Chloë Sevigny, Cheers’ John Ratzenberger, Ellen Barkin, Saturday Night Live’s Tim Meadows, and (though I barely recognized him) The Big Bang Theory’s Simon Helberg, with Tim Blake Nelson, Ron Perlman, and others still waiting in the wings. Not all of the 10 episodes are created equal. Those that work best find Charlie having to methodically and imperfectly fit together pieces of the puzzle before her, rather than deducing the meaning of cryptic clues in an inspired rush. Two installments were particularly outstanding. “The Stall” has Charlie being patiently schooled in the nuances of wood and meat grilling—knowledge she’ll need if she’s to suss out who killed a brother suddenly determined to leave his family’s Texas barbecue business. Meanwhile, “Time of the Monkey” sees our heroine befriending a pair of badass former radicals (played magnetically by Judith Light, of Who’s the Boss?, and another old Law & Order hand, S. Epatha Merkerson) now sidelined to a buzz-killing retirement home, who take revenge on the man responsible for their betrayal decades ago. There’s still an eighth episode available for me to watch, with two more to be released over the next couple of Thursdays.

From its episodic format, to its name-brand performers, and even to the typeface of its opening titles, Poker Face seems designed to appeal to fans—like me—of 1970s NBC/Universal crime dramas, such as those featured in the NBC Mystery Movie “wheel series.” You can bet your bottom dollar I’ll tune in for Season 2, whenever it debuts.

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Below is a scene from the premiere episode of Poker Face, “Dead Man’s Hand,” in which Charlie Cale demonstrates her truth-discerning talents to casino manager Sterling Frost Jr. (Adrien Brody).