She seems to meet people who are fated either to be murdered or murderers. Playing off the 'Cale/hail' rhyme, when she arrives in town and steps into people's lives, she's like a hailstorm ('Cale-force winds'), and she leaves chaos in her wake. 'Poker Face' comes from the card game, of course, and that's where Charlie hails – her last name is a joke with several meanings. Charlie appears to have no poker face, every emotion is on it, but she turns that into a trick when she traps the killer into incriminating and thus destroying themselves. The title 'Poker Face' is a layered joke. In several instances, by the time she confronts them to get them to confess, she's already made moves to ensure their downfall.

She's not a cop, which gives them false confidence they can get away with it, and that's when her poker face kicks in. Some of the time, she enters a story after a murder has already happened, and she's the one who sniffs out the killer and how to catch them.

It's not psychic or intuitive it's a savant-like ability to read the signs, from the tone of voice to subtle, even nearly undetectable behavioral ticks.

Poker Face follows most closely the format of Columbo, not a whodunnit but a 'how will the detective expose the killer?' Charlie Cale's central quirk is her instinctive ability to know when someone lies. The show's secret weapon is Natasha Lyonne as the detective heroine Charlie Cale, a likable oddball do-gooder who's really an angel of death. Poker Face caused a splash when it premiered, a knowing throwback from Rian Johnson that brought back the quirky procedural detective series of the 1970s that featured a charismatic and slightly unusual detective hero at its centre.

Poker face cop show