It's rare to be jolted from the sofa in amazement while watching television on a Friday night. Much more so when the reason for this electrification is a poker scene - in a primetime TV show no less. Yet there I USED TO BE rubbing my eyes, seeking to figure out if we poker players had just been given a trendy nod by an industry at risk of getting these things wrong.

It came in Episode 4 of Hooten & The Lady, a type of light-hearted Indiana Jones-style romp around the globe in eight weekly adventures, created by Red Planet Pictures and shown on Sky television.

The main protagonists are Hooten (Michael Landes) and "THE WOMAN" (Ophelia Lovibond), the type of swashbuckling characters all of us pretend to be when nobody is looking, and when the most important threat to our safety is a fifth beer, or stubbing your toe in the dead of night while looking for the remote. Each episode puts them somewhere picturesque and perilous with a number of lost tombs, rope bridges, crocodiles, explosions, and comic book bad guys along the way.

The scene came on the end of an episode with a theme of IOUs, which led to Hooten facing death for an unpaid IOU; accidentally drinking poisoned tea and needing to search out an ancient scroll in Bhutan in exchange for the antidote; before he writes out one last IOU to hide his raise with pocket aces. No clumsy explanations of hand values; you either knew what was occurring or didn't. Would Hooten meet a cheerful ending, or find himself in big trouble once more?

As poker players, seeing the sport manhandled at the big (and small) screen is all too familiar. Efforts to seem serious and authentic inevitably prove comical; a minimum of to the aficionado (the lay person barely flinches) who can spot a string bet as fast as an out of this world straight flush. But this hand, for probably the most part, had a bit of more nuance in addition to humour, complementing the plot in conjunction with anyone with enough poker nous to grasp the nuts once they see them.

First Hooten looked down at aces. Then the bad guy, Hidalgo, looked down at kings - two hands everyone can understand. Hidalgo is first to behave and bets $50,000 in shiny gold coins with an accent you'd expect from a foul guy.

"I see your fifty thousand..." replies Hooten (okay, we'll excuse this string bet), "and I'll raise you another fifty thousand".

He promptly writes this out as an IOU, the similar promise that got him into trouble initially of the episode, and proclaims with a grin that he is "good for it". They laugh, each convinced in their invincibility, because the camera slowly pulls away, just in time for those folks who haven't already turned over for the scoop headlines to look Hidalgo's moll deal the flop - the ace within the window could be very clear, and a pleasant touch, but... are those two kings at the flop?

Roll credits.

I nearly stubbed my toe on a fourth beer can as I jumped as much as get a better have a look at the screen. So the bad guy just flopped quads?

Alright, so it doesn't really count within the grand scheme of items. It's only a fun method to close off the tale and everything might be back to normal in the beginning of Episode 5 tomorrow night. What's more whether you noticed this little detail, or much more likely blinked and missed it, it won't change your enjoyment.

But having been prepared for the standard anachronisms it was instead subtlety (and Hidalgo) that won the day, with a flop adequate to make no less than one poker fan rise up from the sofa and watch the scene again to verify it wasn't just an accident in production.

Instead it was a unprecedented and clever hand, presented without explanation, with a nod to poker players everywhere.

Nice hand, Red Planet Pictures. GG.

We can't promise lost tombs, ancient relics and even that many pocket aces on PokerStars, but we will offer the most efficient place to play online poker. Click here to get started.

Stephen Bartley is a staff writer for the PokerStars Blog. Follow him on Twitter: @StephenBartley.

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