Poker Face

At the time of writing, there is one review for this show. It is a somewhat incoherent rant about bribes, cameos and general displeasure. It does not reek of impartiality.

I just finished the first episode. It was very, very good and I am hard to please. The role Natasha was made for. Brody is fantastic. The mood, cinematography and writing are all top par. I've been to Laughlin and stayed at the location, so I don't reek of impartiality.

This is going to be good. Well thought out, well executed. Compare with franchised low grade plutonium by the Sherdian syndicate, this is actually good tv.

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.

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 Disque M para Matar (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.

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.

Thank you Rian Johnson for bringing back the 1970s quirky crime detective. Columbo, Rockford Files, Kojak, & Police Woman are just a few of the shows Poker Face takes inspiration from. Nowadays there are a lot of rehashing of the old into new form. Most should never have been attempted. And, I think Natasha Lyonne is perfect. The writing is creative & stories are imaginative, with a suspenseful back story. It has a gimmick of her having special abilities to find the truth but it comes off believable. It's not obvious to the plot & overdone at all. The cast in each episode are top actors and comedians, along with newer faces that hang right in there for talent. Loved seeing Natasha & her castmate from Orange is the New Black, Dascha Polanco back together in 1st episode. I am really looking forward to the remainder of the season.