‘Poker Face’ Modernizes Old-School Detective Shows

In Poker Face, a brand new thriller collection on the Peacock streaming service, Natasha Lyonne performs Charlie Cale, a frazzled, good-natured weirdo who bums throughout the American panorama, chased by a vengeful on line casino proprietor’s lackey, fixing murders along with her uncanny capability to flawlessly detect when somebody is deliberately mendacity.

The collection was created by Rian Johnson, who additionally wrote and directed the Knives Out movies, each of which have been satires of pathetic, finally nugatory wealthy individuals. Poker Face equally pays tribute to well-worn thriller tropes—on this case borrowing closely from old-school TV detectives like Columbo—whereas giving the style a up to date, implicitly left-leaning twist.

Every week, Cale finds herself in a brand new locale. One week it is a Sunbelt truck cease, the subsequent a Southern barbecue tent, the subsequent a divey music venue that includes has-been rockers. The mysteries aren’t uninteresting message-of-the-week tales, they usually ship solidly on the thriller premise. However additionally they function pointillist surveys of the American financial and social panorama with an ideological tilt.

There’s the black navy vet with a promising aspect hustle as a sandwich influencer killed by a mediocre white man over a lottery ticket. There’s the barbecue genius murdered by his hustler accomplice when he desires to go vegan. There’s the drummer murdered by his bandmates who wish to steal authorship of his sure-to-be-hit track.

It is a twisted imaginative and prescient of the American economic system as one populated by makers and moochers. The collection posits that homicide in America is dedicated by the individuals in America who haven’t any inventive talents or ambitions themselves—only a want to be wealthy or well-known, and a willingness to take any shortcut, together with killing one other particular person, to get what they need.