‘Nocturne’ Season 1 Review: The Scariest Man in the Building Never Raises His Voice

‘Nocturne’ arrives on Apple TV today with its first two episodes, then settles into one new chapter every Friday until Christmas Day. The ten episode crime drama adapts Lars Kepler’s novels ‘Lazarus’ and ‘The Sandman’, with Rowan Joffé behind the adaptation and John Hlavin running the show. It is the kind of series that lives or dies on mood, so the real question is whether this Pennsylvania chiller earns a spot on your watchlist.

Liev Schreiber plays Jonah Lynn, an ex soldier turned homicide detective who traded the tough streets of Philadelphia for a quiet life in a small western Pennsylvania town. Peace does not last, because Stephen Graham’s Jurek Walter, a convicted killer held inside a psychiatric facility, still has a grip on the people around him. Tim Van Patten directs the first two episodes, which gives the opening hours a steady and polished hand.

The first thing to understand is that Jurek is built from very familiar bones. He is a patient manipulator who talks a fellow inmate into smashing his own head against a wall, and the shadow of Hannibal Lecter and ‘The Silence of the Lambs’ hangs over nearly every scene he shares with a nurse or doctor. What saves him is Graham’s refusal to play him big, because he goes soft spoken and nearly still, and that calm is far more unnerving than any theatrical snarl. After ‘Adolescence’, it is clear he can make a room feel unsafe with almost nothing.

Schreiber is the weathered anchor, all clenched jaw and pained stoicism, and while he rarely surprises you he is always believable. The real discovery is Zazie Beetz as Saga Bauer, Jonah’s FBI agent goddaughter, who gets herself admitted to Jurek’s facility as a patient. She lets you watch her think, and those flickers of doubt and resolve make her the warmest and most human presence in the story.

Now for the complaints. The haunted detective with a painful past, the stakeouts, the shootouts and the cat and mouse rhythm will all feel well worn if you have sat through a few serial killer stories, and some of the twists land with a satisfying click while others wobble when you stop to ask how they would actually work. Bill Camp and Poorna Jagannathan do solid work as the local police chief and the FBI task force lead, but their characters are sketched thinly and rarely get room to breathe.

The pacing is deliberate, and in the early going it asks for patience. Slow burn Scandi noir is not for everybody, and the show sometimes mistakes quiet for depth. Still, the mystery at its center, with a boy found emaciated and his sister still missing, gives the story a pulse that makes the next episode very hard to resist.

For me, ‘Nocturne’ is a handsomely made and well acted thriller that rarely reinvents anything but almost always holds your attention. Graham’s chilling restraint and Beetz’s sharp, thoughtful work lift it above its borrowed parts, while the uneven plotting keeps it from true greatness. I’m giving the series 8 out of 10, and I’ll happily be back every Friday to see how it ends.

Let me know in the comments whether you agree with my verdict on ‘Nocturne’ and whether Jurek Walter got under your skin as much as he did mine.