Poker Face

Poker Face has been pretty entertaining so far. Natasha Lyonne plays Charlie Cale, a casino host with the talent of being a human lie detector. She can tell if you're lying about anything from playing cards to actual murder. She ends up going on the run and being an amateur detective solving murders across the nation. Each episode is its own story and has a great cast of guest stars each episode. It's being hailed as one of the best new shows of the year by just about every critic and the audience seems to really like it too. If you give this a try there's a good chance you'll end up watching the entire season.

The Poker Face pilot is A+. This is a nice throwback to the murder mystery series that used to be common in the 70s/80s. So many TV shows have gone to the long story format it's refreshing going back to the story of the week format.

The pilot episode is a love letter to series like Columbo. In fact, Rian Johnson goes as far as borrowing some of the fonts from Columbo. If you enjoy this series and have never watched Columbo I highly recommend checking those episodes out. Poker Face has a great cast, it's superbly written, and directed.

Hopefully this series keeps up the quality of the opening episodes. I can't wait to see where they go from here.

I've actually really enjoyed Poker Face more than I thought I would. I originally wasn't going to watch it because it looked like just another detective crime show, it's not. It's so much better. What originally made me watch is that it's created by Rian Johnson (Knives Out, Glass Onion, Looper, etc). I love his movies and how original they are. There are a million of these crime shows with crazy detectives but this is one of the better ones and one of the better new shows of the year. There are enough twists and turns to keep your attention and wanting more. I'm looking forward to seeing more of this show.

Great fun show, binge worthy

Really enjoying this show, watched the first 4 episodes in one hit. Love Natasha Lyonne as the main truth telling character. It's fun, lighthearted but not boring. The characters are well put together. The female truck driver in episode 2 was great. Sometimes you don't need a heavy drama and whilst this isn't edge of your seats its interesting and entertaining all the way through, episode 4 was a bit silly but clever none the less.

So expect some silly moments but fun to watch. Reminds me a bit of 'Shut Eye' about the fortune teller scam.

This story is about a woman who can really tell if your lying, who wouldn't like to have that skill.

That's right - what we have here is the Columbo formula with a female lead, assuming all of his famous quirks and manorisms - from the "one more thing" prods to smoking cigars, Natasha Lyonne delivers "mystery" solving fun as the gravel voiced Charlie Cale. Even the font used for the credits is the same as The NBC Mystery Movie (1971).

This is a small twist on the reverse-detective story made famous first by Frederick Knott in Bei Anruf Mord (1954) and later by Columbo (1971), where the full crime is revealed to the audience up front, and the fun to the audience is watching the sleuth figure it out by discovering all the little details the killers get wrong, and watching the killers squirm.

The twist here is that once the crime is revealed, in typical Rian Johnson fashion, time is backed-up and Charlie Cale's involvement in the setting is revealed. She doesn't witness the crime, but is in orbits of all the characters when the crime is committed. She then uses her "I can tell when they're lying" power to determine who the guilty persons are, and is used to great affect.

This is great fun, and I hope it runs for a long, long time.