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The human lie detector Charlie Cale can break any case, whether it is a crime of passion, a methodically planned murder or a reptile farce based on laxative which has gone wrong. There is only one enigma that she does not seem to train: what to do with her life?
The endless entertaining, Colon-Pastiching Impassive face Returns with the relentless amateur detective of Natasha Lyonne who drifts once again in the small town by meeting shady characters and suspicious circumstances. Where the first season started with Charlie fleeing a boss of the crowd – and ended with her who was chased by another – a previous resolution that planned for her difficult situation gives the new season a different story. It is less about fleeing something than looking for a goal.
While Charlie adapts to being a nomad instead of a fugitive, the case format of the week of the show and the mixture of signing of tight route and Blithe Spirit remain otherwise unchanged. As before, each episode focuses on a murder and begins with a prologue who reveals the culprit. The intrigue does not come from the mystery but from the unconventional means by which Charlie starts the harmful, desperate or downright killer regimes.
If the formula risks becoming repetitive, there is enough variety in stories – everything, from a Paris scandal to a sloppy robbery with a gorbille school – to avoid predictability. Look beyond the luscious premise and tributes and you will find reflections on the way in which daily disappointments and refusals, meanness and greed can lead ordinary people to violent extremes.
Killers and victims are played by a range of committed stars committed: Cynthia Erivo as identical fivefolds competing for a heritage; John Mulaney as a taupe of the FBI affected by ulcers; Katie Holmes as a woman trapped in a marriageless marriage.
But the main draw remains Charlie with a dry and tender mind, whose disproportionate personality illuminates the macabre moments of the show and the chapters more prolonged. However, the fact that its carefree charm and its natural warmth is vulnerability and quiet solitude, tanned by Lyonne in a terribly engaging performance.
Despite all the troubled lives (and disturbing dead) that Charlie meets his trips, it is revealing that the longest connection, perhaps the most significant, is with an anonymous man on the other side of a CB radio (Steve Buscemi). “I thought of installing myself, perhaps of obtaining one of these normal lives that I heard about,” she thinks at some point. Hoping that it will stay on the road a little longer.
★★★★ ☆
Sky Max and now in the United Kingdom from May 8 at 9 p.m. and on Peacock in the United States
