Been waiting a while for "Poker Face" to turn up on this side of the Atlantic, but eventually it has. Whilst it was, for me, not quite at the very top tier of TV it was certainly worth the wait.
Charlie Cale (Natasha Lyonne) has an innate ability to know when someone is lying to her, having used this ability to win at casino poker but been caught, she ends up working as waitress there when the boss takes a shine to her. Following a death at the casino, she's forced to leave and heads across American, taking various jobs and keeping on the move. At each stop she ends up involved in a murder and uses her gift to unmask the killer. But she's not a police officer, and any undo publicity would see her pursuer Cliff LeGrand (Benjamin Bratt), a fixer for the Casino boss, close in on her, so justice is harder to come by.
In what feels like a nostalgic gimmick nowadays, the series borrows heavily from the style and tone of several shows made in the 70's and 80's. The most obvious, and repeatedly namechecked by the creative team is "Colombo". Like with that show we, the audience, see the central murder take place and know who the murderer is, then the show flashes back a few days to show Charlie's interaction with these characters and we'll see her discover who the killer is and why the murder took place. There are guest starts for each episode, which range from legends like Ron Perlman, Nick Nolte and Ellen Barkin to rising stars like, Stephanie Hsu, David Castaneda and Danielle McDonald. There is also a nice return to working with Rian Johnson for Joseph Gordon-Levitt. It's Lyonne's show though and as with "Russian Doll" she proves herself to be an absolute star.
Why not a slightly higher score then? Well, occasionally I thought that perhaps it drifted too far into slapstick comedy, particular I felt in some of the fight scenes that Charlie ends up in. She's not law enforcement, so the killers often work out that killing her is all that stands between them and getting away with it. Maybe that tonal problem is slightly bigger than I initially thought too, as, as I think back over the episodes for this review they do seem to end up getting both bigger and more implausible as they run on.
I did enjoy it though, don't get me wrong, and the positives far outweigh the negatives - I'm looking forward to the proposed second season too.