How Poker Face addresses a major TV detective issue Luther never did
Poker Face spoilers follow.
When Adrian Brody's casino boss deletes an incriminating photo from the phone of a do-gooder cleaner at his hotel, the first thought that may go through your head is, "What about the Recently Deleted folder! It's still in there!"
This is the type of modern-day tech quirk audiences know, but that are so often ignored from detective dramas in favour of a psychologically fraught explanation of how the criminal is caught.
But in Sky's drama Poker Face, technology is woven into the fabric of the story and often factors in how a murder is unravelled in the mind of Charlie Cale (Natasha Lyonne), so that when the Recently Deleted folder later rears its head – on a tablet which she didn't manage to miraculously crack the passcode to or Joe Goldberg-style use someone's dead face to access – the pay-off feels well-earned.
With Poker Face, the murder mystery maestro Rian Johnson has essentially created a mini–Knives Out with each episode of the ten-part season, boasting a genuinely impressive array of character actors from episode to episode.
At the centre of it all is Lyonne's "human lie detector" Charlie, with her intuitive knack for knowing when somebody is fibbing. When she's forced on the run after the first episode, her road trip across the US stumbles across consecutive crime scenes, creating an off-beat case of the week mystery show.
Poker Face also leans into a retro feel. This old-school caper is very much in the mould of the long-running crime series Columbo, where viewers saw the whodunnit bit at the start, leaving the rest of the episode to show how the rumpled LAPD detective, played by Peter Falk, figured it out.
Despite the boom in true crime, cosy crime and police procedurals, the prospect of a modern-day detective show is a prickly one, in part because the existence of security cameras on every corner and smartphones pinging minute-by-minute GPS locations can rob dramas of their inherent tension.
Yet Poker Face does an excellent job of incorporating this technology we all know exists, while also never using it in the obvious deus ex machina ways we've all seen before. After all, when is it ever a fun or interesting to reveal that the good guy has been secretly recording the bad guy's confession on their phone?
In small ways, Poker Face does what many other shows suggested was impossible, as they instead resorted to setting dramas in a bygone age to rid themselves of the narrative pain in the neck that is the iPhone.
Poker Face's approach to tech is an interesting prism through which to look at its approach to the crime-solving genre as a whole, given that Charlie isn't a police officer so has to take an off-beat approach to these murders.
Instead of using fingerprints and case files, she makes the most of all the technological tools at her disposal – whether it's wrapping her head around how security X-ray machines work or a nursing home heart rate monitor measures a pulse.
In making old-soul Charlie a citizen detective, Johnson and Poker Face have broken from the traditions of shows like Luther. The show was always relatively grounded in its storytelling, but its badge-toting eponymous detective (Idris Elba) often fell into the worst stereotypes of the hard-nosed police officer: troubled, belligerent and cutting corners left, right and centre.
DCI Luther's often dogged pursuit of a criminal left you with the inkling that, in another life, he might have been the criminal himself. Meanwhile, Poker Face's Charlie comes to the defence of people society often doesn't care about, like a hotel cleaner or an oddball long-distance truck driver.
The effect is to create a more tender viewing experience, as Charlie has to find another path to justice beyond simply slapping a pair of cuffs on someone and reading them their rights.
Sometimes this does result in her bringing evidence to law enforcement, but in other interesting episodes, such as when a band kills its drummer to steal a song he wrote, she has to find a more imaginative form of comeuppance: leaking the details to a record label and a Thursday Murder Club-style true crime podcast.
It also adds to the modern feel of the show in avoiding the prominent issue of 'copaganda', which has been a conversation surrounding police procedurals in recent years. These dramas can lionise police officers in public perception, glorifying those like John Luther who break the law in the guise of doing justice.
The masterstroke of Poker Face lies in Charlie and her big-hearted pursuit of the truth without the heft of institutional power. Even though it's just a fun and fizzy drama about a witty eccentric solving murders, the way she does so and seeks justice creates a more human dynamic between her and the suspects, which is unlike our usual detective show fare.
Poker Face is available to stream on Sky Max and NOW.
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