“Poker Face” is a 2023 television show (there is going to be a season 2 in 2025) starring Natasha Lyonne as Charlie Cale a casino cocktail waitress who has the ability to read people’s faces and voices when they are lying.
It’s a useful skill for poker playing (from which she is banned), but for Cale it’s also useful for working out a series of murders she ends up in the middle of.
As soon as the credits role a certain portion of the audience will have a flashback to the 1970s crime drama “Columbo.” The similarities don’t stop with the title card, we also know who the murderer is after the opening scene.
Each episode then takes a step back in time to position Charlie near the scene so that she’s involved in the aftermath.
What’s the fun in knowing the who, and even the why, and the how all up front?
Well there’s the trick of knowing the “when it all comes out” I suppose—but for me the fun of the show is the brilliant cast of guest stars (the list reads as a who’s-who of everyone you want to see acting murderous), and of course the fabulous Natasha Lyonne. (I could listen to her reading the phone book in that wonderful croaky voice of hers.)
My one disappointment, and it didn’t stop me from coming back for more each episode, is that Charlie doesn’t sense people are guilty, in fact she’s quite oblivious to their guilt, until she catches them in a lie.
This plays out that she lands in a lot of peril at some point in every episode. She just doesn’t use her gift enough! People who lie about the big things always lie about the little things; and she needs to be a little more alert. But then she would be cynical, and one of the character’s great charms is that she isn’t cynical in general, though she is often disappointed.
At one point Raoul (a film archivist played by Luis Guzmán) asks Charlie, “What is it? A woman’s intuition?” and Charlie says, “No it’s not like a tampon commercial, OK, it’s a real thing.”
So you stay for the fun writing and the excellent cameos.
You might find yourself wishing Charlie looked around more before she walked into rooms with people who turn out to be murderers.
I watched the show this past spring. You can view it on Peacock (or you can buy it on Prime and Apple TV if that’s the way you stream things.)
To refresh my mind and see if the similarities I was catching were from “Columbo” of course I started rewatching that show. The main difference between the two shows is that Columbo (played brilliantly by Peter Falk) is shrewd and observant and knows going into a situation that something is off, and shortly after that knows exactly who, how, why, when…and simply needs to catch the murderer up.
You can also watch “Columbo” on the Peacock streaming service.
Of course I ended up starting a lengthy project to draw Falk as Columbo. But that’s for another post.
Why didn’t I draw Lyonne? All my drawing styles age women horribly. I’m interested in line. That means I usually make more lines than beautiful women have on their faces. If you’ve read the blog you’ll know this isn’t even something I fight any more.
But there are plenty of other actors to sketch, and how fun is it to sketch a murderous psycho, played by Adrien Brody, looking like he hasn’t slept in months, with a dried out pen no less. Good times.
More Cultural Influence from “Columbo”
Oh, and while we are on the subject of “Columbo” and influences on “Poker Face,” there is another comedy-drama crime show that is very Columbo-esque—”Elsbeth.”
It’s in season two on CBS and you can stream it on Paramount Plus. Elsbeth Tascioni, played by Carrie Preston, is a quirky spin off character from “The Good Wife” and “The Good Fight.”
In “Esbeth” the character, who is an attorney, relocates to New York City to work with, and investigate, individuals in the police department.
That puts her at crime scenes and allows her to show off her “Columbo” tactics. People discount her quirkiness and underestimate how astute she is. The audience already knows who the murderer is, and the how and the why, but Elsbeth also at least senses and is working to catch the murderer out.
Show creators Michelle and Robert King were right to bring her back in her own series for us to enjoy. And as is typical of shows from the Kings, the cast is full of characters played in a full fashion that make us care about them.
