Peacock: “Pokerface” starring Natasha Lyonne

I didn’t know much about Natasha Lyonne before watching her new show “Pokerface” (Peacock) and that’s on me. She’s been a busy actress-writer-EP for the last 37 years—a part of everything from “American Pie” to “Russian Doll” to “Orange is the New Black.”

Just from watching her in this series alone, Lyonne strikes me as the kind of straightforward New York-New Jersey type who can spot bullshit from two inches away. Fortunately that’s appropriate for the character she plays in “Pokerface.”

An employee of a third-rate casino somewhere out West, Charlie Cale (Lyonne) has a rare gift: the ability to detect a lie as soon as someone utters one. This comes in handy when one night she finds her co-worker Natalie (Dascha Polanco) murdered. She initially suspects Natalie’s abusive husband but comes around to believing the boss’s simpleton son (Adam Brody) and his sidekick (Benjamin Bratt) did it. She confirms this when she confronts them, and they lie to her face.

Before they can catch her, though, Charlie drives off from the casino in her Plymouth Barricuda. Thus begins her yearlong flight to escape the clutches of the casino’s big boss himself (Ron Pearlman) and the sidekick (Bratt).

Charlie travels across the country, landing in small towns where she is forced to take interesting but off-the-book jobs. One week she’s a worker in a Texas BBQ pit. A month later, she’s a merchandise vendor for a washed-up metal band in the Midwest. Later, she gets a side hustle as a nursing home attendant. In each of these situations, a crime is committed and Charlie, a one-woman CSI, uses her powers of detection to catch the guilty party.

Every episode whacks you on the head with a plot twist you didn’t see coming. And every episode features a name guest star. The great Chloe Sevigny is absolutely smashing as the metal-band singer. Nick Nolte plays an aging prop-maker for a horror film studio. Joseph Gordon-Levitt is excellent as a sadistic Yuppie criminal who is under house arrest. If you’ve never seen Judith Light and S. Epatha Merkelson fight it out on the floor of an assisted living facility floor, you’re missing something special.

With shaggy hair looking as if it were styled by a Mixmaster, and a Noo Yawk accent delivered with a Nancy Walker rasp, Charlie Cale is a tough bird. Not unlike Natasha Lyonne herself—a New York native who was named one of 100 Most Influential People in the World by Time Magazine this year. If you like your entertainment bullshit-free, tune in to “Pokerface.” I can’t wait for Season 2. That’s no lie.

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