If you’re looking for a TV show that follows a brilliantly flawed independent woman investigating mysterious circumstances against all the odds in the deserts on the west coast of the US, then you’re in luck, there are two! Poker Face and High Desert both follow that premise and whilst they do have plenty of differences, the similarities are hard to ignore! Both were brilliant though, and I highly recommend them.

Liar, liar

Poker Face stars the wonderful Natasha Lyonne, who just shines in everything she does. This really leans in to her skills of being deadpan, intelligent, messy and troubled, but somehow charming most people that she stumbles across. The series is created by Rian Johnson, who took the same revisiting style he used in Glass Onion and put it to maximum use here. Each episode opens with a crime of some sort (usually murder), and then you go back to see how our star, Charlie, fits into the story and how she manages to solve it.

It’s completely enthralling and charming, although I think the quality of the stories dipped slightly in the middle of the series. It can be tricky to hold the interest of the viewer when they already know who the perpertrator is, and this didn’t always work, although when it did, it was amazing.

The twist to the series is that Charlie has an ability to know when people are lying. At first, I thought that was going to make the show predictable, but it’s done really well. To know someone is lying doesn’t mean that you know what the truth is, and most of the time it just sends Charlie in a specific direction, rather than laying out the answer to the mystery for her. It’s clever, as you would expect, and this calibre of talent and scriptwriting encouraged a lot of famous faces to join the cast for one-off episodes. Definitely worth a watch.

High hopes

High Desert is less mystery-of-the-week and more of a comedy, following Patricia Arquette as the flaky but smart Peggy, who is an addict trying to stop whilst dealing with family drama, work issues, and muscling her way into working for a private investigator. The story adds on a little bit more intrigue each episode, until gradually all the elements come to a head and you find out what’s really going on.

Arquette is endlessly watchable and really draws you in to side with this character who is actually both troubled and troublesome - robbing, conning, doing drugs, getting into fights, driving under the influence… but also wanting to find the truth, make amends, grieving for her mother, and trying to reunite her family. She is both terrible and brilliant, and therefore a fascinating character to watch. The supporting cast do a great job but can’t really steal screen time from our main character.

The humour is there, and it can be laugh out loud funny, but it’s not obvious or in your face, and it’s not dumbed down at all. I really enjoyed this show, and I hope enough other people did too to warrant a second series.