X
- 2023
- TV-MA
- Peacock
- 2023
- TV-MA
- Peacock
Summary With the gift of telling when someone is lying, Charlie (Natasha Lyonne) travels across the country and helps solve crimes in this drama series created by Rian Johnson.
Created By: Rian Johnson
- 2023
- TV-MA
- Peacock
- 2023
- TV-MA
- Peacock
Poker Face (2023)
Season 1 Premiere: Jan 26, 2023
6.6
Where to Watch
Summary With the gift of telling when someone is lying, Charlie (Natasha Lyonne) travels across the country and helps solve crimes in this drama series created by Rian Johnson.
Created By: Rian Johnson
Where to Watch
Top Cast
Metascore
Universal Acclaim
Based on 43 Critic Reviews
84
98% Positive
42 Reviews
42 Reviews
2% Mixed
1 Review
1 Review
0% Negative
0 Reviews
0 Reviews
Metascore
Universal Acclaim
Based on 43 Critic Reviews
84
98% Positive
42 Reviews
42 Reviews
2% Mixed
1 Review
1 Review
0% Negative
0 Reviews
0 Reviews
A cut above the best. ... You need a consistent and entertaining center to keep things grounded and Lyonne’s shrugging-charismatic performance is as deft as they come.
Lyonne is perfect, bumbling and stumbling like Peter Falk in his trench coat (right down to the cigarettes). ... Johnson hasn’t reinvented the TV wheel. But he’s merged two types of TV sensibilities into something that feels comfortable and new at the same time. “Poker Face” is a joy. Don’t miss it.
User Score
Generally Favorable
Based on 123 User Ratings
6.6
66% Positive
81 Ratings
81 Ratings
12% Mixed
15 Ratings
15 Ratings
22% Negative
27 Ratings
27 Ratings
User Score
Generally Favorable
Based on 123 User Ratings
6.6
66% Positive
81 Ratings
81 Ratings
12% Mixed
15 Ratings
15 Ratings
22% Negative
27 Ratings
27 Ratings
(Ep 1 "Dead Man's Hand" + Ep 2 "The Night Shift")
A waitress named Charlie with a gift for detecting deception gets recruited by a casino boss to exploit a high-roller's poker game, while she deals with her friend's violent murder. Charlie then hits the road, but finds herself poking around the apparent wrongful arrest of a helpful trucker she meets at a remote rest stop.
Charlie is played by Natasha Lyonne as a Columbo-type sleuth who is also a self-described dumbass. Like Columbo she is usually an apologetic and unthreatening interrogator, but unlike Columbo you know that sometimes she is not just PLAYING dumb. She keeps stumbling into obstacles or solutions without knowing how or if she can master or learn from the experience.
The nominal hook for the series is Charlie's seemingly infallible gift for smelling out intentionally deceptive utterances. That ability gets less focus in the initial episodes than one might expect, and is downplayed by Charlie herself as a source of frustration and confusion.I expect from Rian Johnston's past screenwriting that POKER FACE will eventually mine the premise for clever twists and payoffs. However, that isn’t strongly evident in the openering stories. They presumably have to focus more on establishing the character and the series' plot arc. These lean engaging and clear mystery/crime storytelling that is still pretty conventional. If anything, POKER FACE is more distinguished by how Charlie's amateur investigator status lends dramatic weight to her personal confrontations with perpetrators.
This show is a great vehicle for Natasha Lyonne's anti-glamorous screen persona as a bed-headed working-class day-drinker. She gets the best moments in the episodes viewed: an excited off-screen reaction to a luxurious private chamber; and a charming delivery of the line, "I'm gonna... accept this situation.": her bemused reaction to waking up somewhere unexpected.
A low-expectations attitude to her abilities and to looming threats make her an exception to the variously committed and well-resourced law-enforcement and P.I. types who populate crime shows. It makes it harder for writers to insert high stakes into her stories, but it does make her more relatable. By default she wants to ignore people's lies and manipulations and avoid involvement, but she is torn by the impulse to keep poking her nose where it is not welcome because something just doesn't feel right. Rather than being a crime buster straight out of the gate, she is going to have to learn as she goes without much support. You could say that Charlie is the detective character updated for the current generation living in the casual-employment/gig-work/side-hustle economy.
Outside of the likeable lead, most of the other elements of the series are pretty solid, if occasionally requiring some commitment from the viewer . The hour-plus run times that streaming makes possible enabled lots of setup for ongoing character arcs in episode one but also was used to lay out multiple additional characters in the new setting Charlie arrives at while on the road in episode two. Hopefully the episode scripts get a bit tighter as the series progresses.
The first two episodes use a version of the crime solving narrative format used in Columbo and Law and Order: Criminal Intent. That is, we are shown up front the events of the crime, and the question to be resolved is not whodunnit but how close will they get to getting away with it before the investigator gets involved and then catches them out. The specific non-linear narrative structure used here - in which the action starts with the crime then the timeline flashes back to before Charlie crosses paths with those events - could quickly get old if repeated consistently. (Unless, perhaps, the writers play around with some variations of it.)
The show’s production has a retro feel, utilising seventies/eighties era colours and fonts for the credits, and a tendency to lean on in-camera or otherwise low-tech methods to add expressive visuals. For example, a youth’s alienation is flagged by shooting his point of view watching a flirting couple through the smudged pane of a frosted refrigerator door in a store. The success of the show will depend on how well it combines an ongoing arc for Charlie with standalone crime of the week stories. There is apparently a packed cast of name actors slated for future episodes. John Ratzenberger in episode two provides a solid but non-showy performance in a supporting role, while the casino boss in ep one gave Adrian Brody a chance to deliver a dense backstory in the enjoyable form of a rhythmically flowing yarn. So, the uses the guest cast are put to will probably vary. The mildly taxing screen time demands of setting up a new scenario in each episode lost them half a star. Otherwise episodes went down easy, combining humour and dramatic tension in clear and enjoyable ways. This is almost certainly a worthwhile series to follow.
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Even though this is a procedural, it’s more elevated, more cinematic and more entertaining than most. ... Lyonne is perfectly suited to this milieu.
Poker Face plays it a lot more straight [than Knives Out]. But it’s gripping, grisly when it needs to be, and Lyonne is charm on a stick. Anyone who claims they aren’t enjoying it is probably telling porky pies.
Lyonne’s performance, simultaneously laid-back and wired, makes “Poker Face” worth the buy-in. ... This is a low-stakes table, but it’s a fun one to hang out at.
Charlie Cale may be too similar to Lyonne's other characters to make the impression that Jessica Fletcher or Lieutenant Columbo did, but this is a worthy use of the esteem Lyonne has generated as she hits middle age. Some episodes ramble on a bit long, but it's hard to mind when there's so much going for them.
“Poker Face” plays a pretty small-stakes game. That might well add up to a winner by Peacock’s standards, but it isn’t worth going “All in” on it just yet.
Natasha Lyonne is a really great fit for this role and does a excellent job with it. The show itself is highly addictive similar to SVU or Criminal Minds, its formulaic in the same way but never seems to get old. I think my biggest complaint about it is that it only has one season so far.
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Quirky show. Lead actress takes some getting used to, but ok. Plots are kind of thin sometimes but ok other times. A Columbo structure (we know who did it up front) while she solves the crime. Kind of stupid that she puts herself in danger each show and escapes with great luck. We'd rate it "give it a try and you may like it."
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Reminds me of the old Ellery Queen show where they gave you the clues and Jim Hutton would break the fourth wall and ask, “Have you solved it yet?” In this case they drop a heavy-handed, non sequitur clue you can only miss if not paying attention. Kind of takes the fun out of the detection part! The lead is quirky, but she’s not compelling. Good actors helped the premier.
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The first two episodes are engaging and fun, with great cinematography. The show becomes increasingly formulaic with less mystery and less believability in each new episode. I'd say it's a 7 for the first 2 episodes, trending towards a 4 later in the season. I stopped watching at ep 7.
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Production Company:
- Animal Pictures
- MRC Television
- T-Street
Initial Release Date: Jan 26, 2023
Number of seasons: 2 Seasons
Rating: TV-MA
Awards
Golden Globes, USA
• 1 Nomination
International Online Cinema Awards (INOCA)
• 11 Nominations
Online Film & Television Association
• 1 Win & 10 Nominations
