Need a palate cleanser after Adolescence and The Last of Us? Try this quirky murder mystery

Poker Face (season 2) ★★★½

Charlie Cale is a good hang. Natasha Lyonne’s accidental detective, a Las Vegas casino worker on the run from a vengeful crime boss who keeps finding herself adjacent to a suspicious mortality, has a cheery personality, a sardonic sense of humour and an admirably optimistic outlook for someone so death-adjacent. “Introspection makes me queasy,” Charlie declares early on in this murder mystery’s second season, and the show is so hardy and purposeful – clues! weird idiosyncrasies! wild guest stars! – that she’s impossible to fault.

Natasha Lyonne as accidental detective Charlie Cale in Poker Face.Credit:

Created by Knives Out filmmaker Rian Johnson, who again leads the director’s roster this season, Poker Face was the shot in the arm the procedural format needed.

Once Charlie was on the run, these self-contained episodes did Columbo proud: viewers get to see the seed of homicide planted in the killer’s head before the deed is carried out and covered, with Charlie as the unlikely unofficial investigator. Blessed and cursed with the ability to tell if someone else’s words are lies, Charlie applied a surreptitious fix.

That’s a “howcatchem”, as opposed to the traditional whodunit, and that spin extends to the second season, which picks up where the first ended, with Charlie hospitalised as Cliff (Benjamin Bratt), the fixer pursuing her, closes in.

Cynthia Erivo (right) as two of the sextuplets and Natasha Lyonne as Charlie Cale in Poker Face.Credit:

As goofy as Poker Face can be, it has a sharp existential undertone and an understanding of working-class realities. Charlie’s movements are tied to seasonal jobs and cash-in-hand gigs – she bonds with the types of characters who usually have no more than a line in most contemporary American shows.

It would have been easy for this new instalment to duplicate the pluses of its predecessor, but if anything Poker Face is messing with Charlie’s motivations and just how much a single episode can encompass. Some of the outcomes sound like casual dares made good: can Wicked star Cynthia Erivo play multiple sisters in an outrageous episode? That’s the fuel for the season debut, with Erivo eating up the contradictory characters and twisted humour. There’s a mansion worthy of Poirot, but Belgium’s finest never dealt with a hipster DJ and Looney Tunes identity theft.

Lyonne, who has made Charlie the Jessica Fletcher that Millennials can vibe with, has an irreverent sense of gravity. Her 20-a-day voice twists the dialogue into screwball shapes, and she goes with the flow in ways that The Fugitive never could. It’s notable that Lyonne’s ease rubs off on her co-stars – stand-up star John Mulaney’s boyishness has a nefarious edge in his episode. In the time of Adolescence and The Last of Us, this show continues to be a welcome palate cleanser.

Poker Face is now streaming on Stan, which is owned by Nine, the publisher of this masthead.

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