BS detector in fine fettle as Poker Face deals new hand

Opinion

American movie and television director Rian Johnson has always been upfront about his murder-mystery influences. His feature film debut, 2005’s Brick, was basically a Dashiell Hammett detective story transplanted to a modern high school. The Knives Out movies (with a new instalment due later this year) owe a debt to Agatha Christie, not so much the Queen of Mystery’s books but those star-packed cinematic extravaganzas like 1974’s Murder on the Orient Express and 1978’s Death on the Nile.

And then there’s Poker Face, the Natasha Lyonne-led TV series that has just returned for a very welcome second season. (Season 2 is streaming on Citytv+, a Prime Video add-on channel, with new episodes dropping on Thursdays. Season 1 is available through Citytv+, as well as showing free on CBC Gem.)

Johnson’s most obvious pop-culture touchstone here is Columbo. (That show’s vintage 1970s seasons are available to rent through Prime Video.) But like the best of Johnson’s work, Poker Face is a shrewd, stylish mash-up of the old and the new, taking retro sources and refreshing them in meaningful ways.

The show, which follows Charlie Cale (Lyonne), a former casino worker on the run from the mob, manages to be affectionately nostalgic but also urgently up to date. In each episode, Charlie ends up in some oddball corner of America, solving a crime (that’s the old-school part) while also working some precarious, underpaid, temporary job in the gig economy (that’s the 2025 part!).

Poker Face’s nods to Columbo start with the ’70s-style network-TV title credits, which are in a blocky yellow typeface.

Then we meet our underestimated, underdog detective. While Lt. Columbo (Peter Falk) had a chewed-on cigar and a clapped-out Peugeot, Charlie has a cigarillo — though this season she’s trying to quit — and a beat-up 1969 Plymouth Barracuda. Charlie changes her outfits more often than the good lieutenant, but she does kind of channel Falk’s hunched posture and raspy voice.

She also shares Columbo’s pesky, tenacious, “just one more thing” approach to cracking cases. While Columbo seemed to immediately, intuitively home in on the guilty person and then spend the rest of the episode wearing them down with friendliness, Charlie cracks cases with her built-in “bulls**t detector.” She can tell when people are lying, an ability she views not as a supernatural power but as an inconvenient personal tic, and then she’s driven to figure out why.

Like Columbo, Poker Face is not a standard whodunnit but a so-called “howcatchem.” Using the inverted-mystery structure, it shows the crime being committed, with the audience following along. The suspense comes through wondering how the detective will trap the murderer.

This format was one of the reasons Columbo was able to book guest stars like John Cassavetes, Leonard Nimoy, Laurence Harvey, Johnny Cash and Ruth Gordon. Playing a murderer on Columbo meant a lot of screentime and almost always a role as an extravagant, showy, hubristic charmer.

Likewise, Poker Face is anchored by Lyonne’s fabulously eccentric lead performance, but we get loads of great supporting talent playing murderers, victims (and occasionally both). This season kicks off with Wicked’s Cynthia Erivo times five — she plays quintuplets! — and follows up with folks like Kumail Nanjiani, Giancarlo Esposito, Melanie Lynskey, John Mulaney, Awkwafina, Method Man, John Cho and “character actress Margo Martindale.” The list goes on. (Really — check out the Season 2 trailer.)

Using Columbo’s “case-of-the-week” format, Poker Face combines the easygoing, even predictable pleasures of episodic television with a constant rotation of new settings and new characters.

One of the most charming personality traits Columbo and Charlie share is a genuine curiosity about other people and their lives and work. In the course of solving crimes, Columbo would learn about photography or architecture or magic or orchestra conducting or winemaking. Charlie also takes in a new subculture every episode, but there are key differences. Columbo really specialized in the “rich weirdos” subgenre of crime, with pampered, privileged people playing for high stakes.

Charlie has occasional run-ins with the rich and powerful, but most of her crime-solving takes place on the social and economic margins, often in overlooked small towns and struggling, stressed-out businesses. In Season 1, Charlie worked at a dinner theatre, a kart-racing track and a highway truck stop. This season has her hanging out with fruit pickers, hired Halloween zombies and a minor-league baseball team that plays at Velvety Canned Cheese Park.

In many ways, Poker Face leans into the fun but formulaic entertainment of 1970s network television, offering self-contained crime-solving that wraps up nicely within 60 minutes. It’s in Charlie’s ongoing road trip — and the surprisingly realistic sense of people just getting by — that the series finds an empathetic, emotional and very contemporary resonance.

Poker Face isn’t just a throwback. As Charlie explores the edges of Americana, the show actually has a lot to say about here and now.

alison.gillmor@freepress.mb.ca