With his two Knives Out films starring Daniel Craig, crime mastermind Rian Johnson has proven that he can conjure up suspense, tension, and complex crime plots as skillfully as a card cheat pulls aces. We’ve watched his new series Poker Face and are quite impressed.
Poker Face: First Series From Knives Out Creator Rian Johnson
The first episode begins with a thrilling twist : While cleaning the presidential suite, cleaning lady Natalie (Dascha Polanco, known from Orange Is the New Black) discovers highly compromising material. We don’t see exactly what it is—a clever move, by the way, to build even more suspense. Distraught, she wants to do the right thing and goes to her two superiors (Benjamin Brett and Adrien Brody), who skillfully try to outdo each other in their obsequiousness.
Instead of taking the compromising material to the FBI as promised, they simply get rid of Natalie. Why? Clearly, because the person in whose possession the mysterious material was found is a high roller with a fortune. Meaning: a gambler with tons of cash. The story is set in a casino hotel, a world familiar to many players who seek the best £5 deposit casino non gamstop 2026 options, where high-stakes gamblers are often treated with special privileges. Understandably, the two crooks don’t want the cash cow, who’s been a reliable source of income for years, to end up behind bars. Their plan seems ingenious. Their only problem is that Natalie is very good friends with Charlie Cale.
Natasha Lyonne: Quirky Heroine of Poker Face
Charlie Cale, brilliantly and eccentrically portrayed by Natasha Lyonne (also known from Orange Is the New Black), lives a marginal life in a desert trailer park and works as a cocktail waitress, often surrounded by gamblers, drifters, and casino regulars. Like many characters drawn to gambling environments—both physical casinos and online platforms such as non GamStop casinos—Charlie exists on the fringes, observing human behavior at its rawest.
Furthermore, Charlie is also incredibly intelligent and possesses the ability to instantly detect lies. This skill, unfortunately, comes across as a bit too superheroic in the series. This regrettably diminishes the suspense somewhat, as she always knows immediately who the culprit is.
Poker Face: Columbo Sends His Regards
For his series, Knives Out creator Rian Johnson drew inspiration from the television classic Columbo. This means that instead of searching for the perpetrators, the focus is on how Charlie, as a living lie detector, exposes their murderous game.
Just like in Columbo, the viewer learns right at the beginning who committed the murder and how. So you can sit back and enjoy Charlie doing her job.
Rian Johnson’s Childhood
Rian Johnson, as was readily apparent in his Knives Out films, but also in his Neo-Star Wars film, is a child of his time. Inspired by films and series from the 1970s and 1980s, he skillfully introduces a kind of retro aesthetic. With Poker Face (as with Knives Out), Johnson was thrilled to realize a project in the style of the crime series he watched as a child.
Columbo and The Rockford Files are both good crime series, but what really makes you tune in every week, according to Rian Johnson, is the sympathy you feel for the main character. With Natasha Lyonne in the lead role, this approach works perfectly. It’s hard to resist her gleeful loser persona.
Furthermore, it’s extremely entertaining to watch her observe situations from an outsider’s perspective and try to solve a mystery. At the same time, she’s someone who always treats the other characters as equals and never acts from a position of superiority. Essentially, it’s similar to Columbo, who plays with his persona and always encounters the murderers as a bumbling underdog, even though he’s intellectually far superior to them.
Poker Face: A Series With a Twist
What’s truly refreshing about Poker Face, besides the fantastic cast, which includes several guest stars (Adrien Brody, Benjamin Brett, Chloe Sevigny, Ellen Barkin, Joseph Gordon-Levitt, Nick Nolte, etc.), is above all the return to the classic series format. Each episode is more or less self-contained, and each time Charlie, on the run, plunges into a new world and a new case. Of course, there’s a common thread running through the story from episode one.
Even though the old-fashioned one-episode-a-week format didn’t exactly win over potential broadcasters, its success proves Rian Johnson right. Season two is a done deal. And even though Johnson himself is very modest in his approach, the series’ charm isn’t solely due to the main character. The individual episodes also have their own magic.
Poker Face is often reminiscent of Breaking Bad. This is no coincidence, as Johnson himself directed three episodes of the cult series. All in all, Poker Face is a highly entertaining series that will satisfy crime fans like few others. Even though the episodes are self-contained, they can easily be binge-watched on a cozy Netflix and chill evening.
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