Poker Face: Natasha Lyonne’s seriously funny whydunnit caper is back with a cracking A-list cast | Television

The neatest thing about Poker Face is that it doesn’t trouble attempting to shore up what it is aware of is a flimsy premise. Followers of the primary season will recall that Charlie Cale, Natasha Lyonne’s wisecracking 70s detective homage, has an in-built potential to detect a lie as quickly as somebody tells it. As an alternative of attempting to clarify this reward away as the results of a gamma storm or spider chew or covert authorities experiment, it now accepts that, yeah, she has a “freaky little lie detector trick”, that’s the extent of the concept, obtained an issue with that? Today, Charlie waves away any queries about it with an “Eh”, a shrug and a cheeky nudge of the baseball cap and aviator shades.

After utilizing her expertise to work her means by a collection of more and more preposterous case-of-the-week murders final time, then ending up with the mafia placing out a success on her, Charlie begins the second season (beginning 8 Could, 9pm, Sky Max) on the lam as soon as extra, solely now goons with weapons maintain popping up and capturing at her. For what might have been a high-concept present, Poker Face is surprisingly fuss-free about all of this, and barely lets a violent mob-based subplot get in the best way of what Charlie does finest. That’s, wandering round small-town America, figuring out who’s a killer and the way/why they did it, then exposing them for his or her horrible crimes. She has to dodge bullets now and again, positive, however she at all times retains her eyes on the prize: coughing out the phrase “bullshit” and cracking the case.

Poker Face is created by Knives Out director Rian Johnson and, very like that franchise, it has turn out to be a spot for A-listers to chop free and be daft. The primary episode options Cynthia Erivo, and to get its cash’s well worth the present has her taking part in quintuplets, former youngster stars contesting the desire of their not too long ago deceased evil momager. Later, Katie Holmes pops up because the pissed off spouse of a morbid funeral director, performed by Breaking Unhealthy’s Giancarlo Esposito, and Kumail Nanjiani goes all-in as an award-winning Florida cop who additionally occurs to be loads just like the Tiger King, Joe Unique. Better of all, Rhea Perlman returns as mob boss Beatrix Hasp, and she or he works so properly with Lyonne that it’s a disgrace they couldn’t have finished the complete season collectively.

There’s a long-standing debate about whether or not comedy ever will get the reward it deserves. Humorous movies hardly ever win Oscars; humorous exhibits often get pushed out of finest comedy classes by “comedy” collection that aren’t really very humorous in any respect (cough, The Bear). So it’s immensely fulfilling to observe one thing like Poker Face, which is tv of significant high quality and precision that opts for comedy, wordplay and slapstick over the arid melancholy of significant drama. And whereas most TV likes to assume it’s concerning the underdog, Poker Face really walks the stroll. Charlie’s life on the run hardly ever takes her to massive cities. She excursions cities and rural areas, working her means by the gig economic system, getting by as an apple-picker, a parking lot attendant, even a corpse for rent. The one draw back to season two is that it’s gone a bit business: there are a few meta episodes about movie units and TV stars, however even when it goes there, it a minimum of makes the story concerning the crew and the individuals doing the gruntwork.

Very like the exhibits it pays tribute to – Columbo and Homicide, She Wrote – every episode of Poker Face works as a standalone story, with its personal homicide to unravel, although it does take three episodes to wrap up final season’s cliffhanger and push off in its personal course. When it does, the story will get even sillier. It’s a uncommon present that makes you scribble down notes reminiscent of “meth alligator”, “shrimp-flavoured Vienna sausage” and “explosive vape”. The love of puzzles that fuelled the Knives Out whodunnits seems right here, however it inverts the premise. It exhibits us who did it in the beginning, so there’s no thriller in that respect. The pleasure is in working backwards, and filling within the Charlie-based gaps, so we are able to work out how she figures it out.

Lyonne and her swagger make Poker Face cool however, basically, it’s Jonathan Creek with a love of 70s cinema – and I imply that as a praise. Fashionable and nerdy, witty and intelligent, it’s rock-solid, hard-working leisure.