Poker Face, season 2, review: Natasha Lyonne's crime caper remains rootin'-tootin' fun

Telegraph

08-05-2025

Any TV show that lists Joseph the Gerbil and Daisy the Alligator in amongst Katie Holmes and Justin Theroux in its star-studded cast list is already a hit with me. But it is also telling – you don't get a call sheet that also contains Cynthia Erivo, Awkwafina and Giancarlo Esposito if your series is not seriously good… yet also doesn't take itself too seriously.
At a time when premium TV is manacled to its own self-importance – worlds, mythologies, entire tectonic plates of subreddits and po-faced hypotheses— the best thing about Poker Face (Sky Max) is that it is rootin'-tootin' fun.
The setup is simple – Charlie Cale (Natasha Lyonne) knows when someone is lying. It is a superpower that, like all superpowers, turns out to be as much a burden as a boon, but Poker Face doesn't trouble itself too much with the metaphysics. Instead, it just barrels on from episode to episode, a broad comedy road trip that in season one took Charlie Cale from a name badge waitress at a Nevada casino, via the murder of her best friend, on to a life of crime-busting across America. It means that Charlie is perpetually on the run – in series one from an angry casino owner and now, in series two, from a rival owner called Beatrix Hasp (Rhea Perlman).
What's supposed to happen in a sophomore season is that we deep-dive into Charlie's backstory, maybe get a flashback episode to unpick her childhood trauma or meet her wacky parents. Poker Face doesn't do that and is all the better for it. Although series two takes us from an animal liberation operation at a police awards ceremony to a diabolical elementary school student's plot concerning the class pet (see, Gerbil), it is, at heart, a procedural, and if it's a long way from Law and Order in tone then it also recognises that familiarity breeds content.
It's not a perfect procedural – armchair sleuths will become frustrated at the ease of solving some of the whodunits, particularly as the series goes on. But even though there's always a murder and a new small-town sign to tell you you're somewhere new each week, the format that TV jettisoned a few decades back feels, ironically, fresh and exciting. Yes, there is a statement vehicle (Charlie drives a battered Plymouth Barracuda from town to town, so no import tariffs there) and yes, the format allows for a host of knock-knock, look who it is guest stars. Creators Rian Johnson (Knives Out) and Tony Tost plainly love their movies, with everything from Neo-noir to Smokey and the Bandit on their playlist. Columbo (a known Johnson fave) is probably the most obvious lodestar. This is a series that surfs on vibes and iconography.
The danger is that those nods and winks get ahead of character and story, and the whole thing becomes a film-school love-in, but against that Poker Face has its procedural scaffolding and Lyonne in the lead. She is both funny and believable, bringing heart to Poker Face's smarts. Charlie is the series' lightning rod but in Lyonne's hands she is selfless and interested (rather than pulling cynically on a cigarette and telling the latest perp that she knows they're god-damned lying.) It is a winning combination – Johnson and Tost can throw in any new character (even Joseph the Gerbil and Daisy the Alligator) or locale and Charlie's ever-open mind holds it all together.