Poker Face

In his return to television, director Rian Johnson reinvents Columbo with Natasha Lyonne as a working-class, cigarette-smoking, beer-drinking shark who can sniff out a lie from a mile away. After an untold number of years working at a casino for mob boss–like Sterling Frost Sr., played by the indomitable Ron Pearling, Lyonne’s Charlie Cale is on the lam. After inspiring failson extraordinaire Frost Jr. to suicide, she flees from nameless town to nameless town in her Plymouth Barracuda, helping avenge and defend friends—from an unbathed metal drummer to a barbecue-pit master gone vegan—from grisly murder and mischief by calling bullshit. Amid an unending bombardment of shows focused on the plights of the ultrawealthy, Cale’s working-class protagonist, using her superhuman-like ability to stand up for the common man, is a refreshing experience.