‘Nocturne’ Apple TV Review: Liev Schreiber And Stephen Graham Elevate A Crime Thriller Built From Familiar Genre Tropes

Nearly every recurring trope in crime fiction is packed into Nocturne, Apple TV’s new series attempting to stake out its own territory in the increasingly crowded streaming-crime market. The show is an adaptation of two novels, The Sandman and Lazarus, written by Lars Kepler, the pen name of Swedish married writers Alexander Ahndoril and Alexandra Coelho Ahndoril. The fourth and seventh books in the series centered on detective Joona Linna (there are eleven novels so far), the two stories have been combined here to create a kind of greatest-hits collection of genre conventions, from the troubled detective —a staple of Nordic noir— to the frantic search for a missing girl, a serial killer and a character with more than a few similarities to Hannibal Lecter.

That Nocturne is a reasonably effective series says a lot about creator Rowan Joffé and showrunner John Hlavin, who have assembled an excellent cast and do a pretty good job sustaining the tension in what is, ultimately, a remix of a lot of familiar genre elements. What they have done is move the story from Sweden to Pennsylvania —slightly altering some character names and procedural details but not much else— and assembled a group of actors capable of elevating almost anything. Led by Liev Schreiber, the cast includes Zazie Beetz, Bill Camp, Rory Culkin and, most notably, award-winning actor Stephen Graham.

Schreiber plays Jonah Lynn, a retired police officer with a troubled past that we gradually come to learn more about. When a nearly dead boy is found near a bridge, Jonah is brought in by the current police chief (Camp), since he was the officer who handled the case of two siblings who disappeared three years earlier, a case that was never solved. And so everyone begins searching for the girl, whose whereabouts remain unknown. Jonah is convinced that the case is connected to Jurek Walter (Graham), a criminal being held in a maximum-security facility for mentally unstable offenders. The two cases eventually lead them to Saga Bauer (Beetz), another police officer, who agrees to go undercover inside the prison to get information from Jurek.

It’s true that Jurek —as we see almost immediately, manipulating guards and nurses— is a dangerous man with an enormous criminal record. But he was already behind bars when the original crime took place. So how, exactly, could he be responsible for it—or even know anything about what happened to the girl? Jonah believes Jurek uses his almost hypnotic gift with words, à la Hannibal Lecter, to manipulate prison staff and turn them into messengers between himself and an accomplice, who is the one actually committing the crimes. And the series makes it clear that something along those lines is indeed happening, since one of the guards (Culkin) appears to have fallen under Jurek’s psychological spell.

Over the course of ten episodes that are considerably longer than they need to be, Nocturne initially does a good job establishing its universe. This is a traditional crime thriller with just about every possible ingredient thrown into the mix. In addition to the elements already mentioned —the serial killer with almost supernatural powers, the missing girl, the troubled cop and the undercover officer in danger— the writers add mysterious clues found in the woods that seem to have wandered in from an extra episode of the first season of True Detective, along with revelations about Jonah’s hidden past. None of it is particularly surprising, really, but there is something reasonably enjoyable about watching a series manage to sustain tension even while relying on the familiar machinery of the crime genre.

That has a lot to do with the cast and with the show’s creation of a gloomy, small-town atmosphere characteristic of so many streaming thrillers. The Ray Donovan actor effectively conveys Jonah’s exhaustion, anxiety and growing obsession —a bushy mustache certainly helps— while Beetz gives strength and intelligence to an agent whose undercover assignment in the prison gradually becomes a matter of life and death. (Yes, Jonah has a corkboard at home covered with newspaper clippings about the case.)

But the show’s biggest weapon is the actor from Adolescence, who takes up where Anthony Hopkins left off with Hannibal and turns his slow-moving, soft-spoken, almost whispering Jurek into a terrifying monster for anyone unfortunate enough to cross his path. He doesn’t have to do much. A few words murmured in someone’s ear, combined with that perpetually pained expression, are enough to convince people to join his side. Inside the prison and out.