“Just that something is off,” she says by way of explanation. Whether it’s her best friend promising she’s fine after a fight with her husband or a stranger trying to bluff his way to the pot, Charlie sniffs out bullshit every time it drifts her way.

“And yet she played with an almost unnatural infallibility.” Soon, we find out why: Lyonne’s Charlie Cale always knows when someone’s lying. “She played straight,” Sterling Frost Jr.

And so we got seasons-long arcs, bloated backstories and endless moody drone shots.īut it turns out that to make pacey, snackable TV, you just need someone on the creative team willing to take risks.Midway through the “ Poker Face” premiere, Adrien Brody’s smarmy casino boss recounts the legend behind Natasha Lyonne‘s card-playing prowess. It reminds us that episodic TV can be great!ĭecades of low-grade cop-show filler on network TV led us to think that good quality had to mean Big, Important and Ambitious. Mostly it's a fantastic showcase for Natasha Lyonne's familiar potty-mouthed, cynical-but-genial persona, but it's more than that. The first half of each episode shows us the murder, the second half reveals how Charlie solves it. Lyonne's Charlie is on the run (for reasons we won't spoil) and moves on each week like Kane in Kung Fu - namechecked in episode one - or the littlest hobo in The Littlest Hobo. You got it: It's Columbo for a new generation. It's got a different location, a different crime and a mostly different cast every week. It even has a gimmick: a crime-solver with an infallible talent for spotting lies.īut there's a key difference. Poker Face has bright stars - Russian Doll's Natasha Lyonne chief among them, though each week sees a new bunch of guests - and is ten episodes long.

Poker face cop show