FACE OF EVIL

Terrifying Emmy Winner Makes Thrilling New Show a Must-See

Stephen Graham is a monstrous madman in Apple TV’s gripping “Nocturne.”

Stephen Graham oozes such calm, intense menace in Nocturne that the air practically vibrates, and his villainously placid turn fuels Apple TV’s compulsively watchable serial-killer thriller.

As a madman locked in a psychiatric facility cage for gruesome murders he claims he didn’t commit, the Adolescence star speaks slowly and quietly, moves deliberately, and squints with focused forcefulness, his measured demeanor at unnerving odds with his interior insanity. It’s a terrific performance of controlled, cagey chaos, and so smug and vile that it singlehandedly seizes one’s attention and refuses to let go.

An adaptation of Lars Kepler’s novel The Sandman, which was created by Rowan Joffé and developed by John Hlavin, Nocturne (Oct. 29 on Apple TV) completes a trilogy of shows—following Mare of Easttown and Task—about thickly accented Pennsylvania sleuths working complicated and perilous criminal cases.

When we first meet former U.S. Army Ranger and Philly detective Jonah Lynn (Liev Schreiber), he’s retired from the suburban Fairhaven force, spending his time completing the treehouse he didn’t finish before his wife and daughter perished in a car accident. Jonah turned in his badge after putting away Jurek Walter (Graham), who was found guilty of abducting multiple people and burying them alive.

Nonetheless, the cop always believed Jurek had an accomplice, and his theory gains steam when young Michael (Landon Valentin)—who was seemingly snatched with his sister Felicia by Jurek four years earlier—materializes out of nowhere, thus reopening the investigation.

Knowing this means Felicia might still be alive, Chief Ellison (Bill Camp) enlists the services of FBI Special Agent Alexandra Quinn (Poorna Jagannathan). Jonah also unofficially comes out of retirement to help, not simply because he promised Michael and Felicia’s mom Ida (Chrissy Metz) that he’d bring her kids home, but because he has a personal stake in this nightmare: his partner Sam killed himself after the disappearance of his wife—due, Jonah suspects, to Jurek, even though the baddie was incarcerated at the time—and he’s since taken Sam’s daughter, undercover agent Saga (Zazie Beetz), under his wing. Saga, naturally, wants to help as well, and the discovery of a remote location where the kids might have been held motivates both to fully commit to the cause.

Nocturne’s protagonists are a collection of recognizable types, yet Schreiber, Camp, and Beetz infuse them with convincing grief, fury, and guilt, complemented by sturdy work from both Jagannathan and, as a fellow officer unafraid to cut corners to get to the truth, Gary Carr.

Graham, however, is the magnetic epicenter of Joffé and Hlavin’s series, generating chilling unease by licking a plastic Jello container clean with his finger or responding to something amusing with a curt, high-pitched squeak of a laugh. His Jurek is a buff madman who’s all the more physically intimidating for being so unflaggingly composed—and, additionally, for having the apparent gift of getting inside people’s heads, such as an inmate in an adjoining cell whom he coolly persuades to commit a grotesque act.

With direction from Tim Van Patten and Allen Coulter (among others), Nocturne is ominous and intriguing, piling on clues—like strange symbols carved onto trees—as Jonah and company strive to decipher how Jurek is orchestrating events and the villain seduces a new acolyte in empathetic nurse Karl (Rory Culkin). If the material has a major shortcoming, it’s that much of what happens with Karl and Jurek requires a significant suspension of disbelief because, despite heavy security protocols on Jurek’s restricted floor, no one ever notices the duo regularly conversing and passing items to each other. Given the show’s established logistical realities, their relationship feels far-fetched, and because it’s central to the narrative, it routinely undermines plausibility.

Setting aside the fact that Karl appears invisible to surveillance monitors whenever he’s with the hospital’s most dangerous and closely guarded patient, Nocturne pulses with urgency, and its secrets run deep—including why Jurek targeted Michael and Felicia in the first place. That question lingers even after the series reveals that Jurek’s modus operandi is more twisted than initially assumed, and the action remains taut through its captivating middle passages, during which Saga poses as a psych-ward inmate to get intel on Jurek.

A subplot involving the whereabouts of a missing day nurse is another tantalizing piece of this fractured puzzle, and it furthers the notion that Jurek is pulling lethal strings from his solitary-confinement cell.

Nocturne’s strong storytelling requires no flowery formal embellishments; throughout, the focus is on both its main characters’ attempts to unravel a mystery that grows knottier with each new revelation and, simultaneously, its killer mastermind’s Machiavellian scheming. Graham’s Jurek is so hateable that he makes one fiercely root for Schreiber’s Jonah, and the hero’s quest is energized by plotting that avoids superfluous detours.

Despite occasionally flashing back to years earlier, the show is lean and fleet, and if a couple of its later developments strain credulity, they don’t derail the proceedings—largely because they’re stepping stones toward desirable confrontations.

Apple TV provided the press with only seven of Nocturne’s 10 installments, so it’s impossible to comment on the series’ ability to close the deal. To be sure, with multiple balls in the air at the end of its seventh episode, it’s entirely possible things fall apart rather than cohere. Still, Joffé and Hlavin’s assured orchestration of their tale inspires confidence that they know where they’re going and don’t just have stock resolutions up their sleeve.

Furthermore, Graham is such a magnetically evil presence that, whatever his ultimate destination, it’s impossible not to want to see where his Jurek is headed—and, fundamentally, to find out why he’s gone through all this deranged trouble in the first place.

The best thing that can be said about Nocturne is that, despite its familiarities, it keeps you watching—a virtue that will likely make it another must-see entry in the streamer’s growing catalog of solid genre dramas.

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Nick SchagerEntertainment Critic

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