Liev Schreiber and Stephen Graham both excel in this gritty murder mystery series.
In “Nocturne,” his latest TV series following “Ray Donovan,” and “The Perfect Couple,” Liev Schreiber is chosen wisely as the main detective, while Stephen Graham is also brilliant as the main serial killer.
I was given a look at the first seven episodes, and I kept watching in order to see where creator Rowan Joffe (the creator of “Tim Star” and the director of the mediocre “Before I Go to Sleep”) and showrunner John Hlavin are heading into. Are we entering another “Silence of the Lambs” type show? Maybe not in the cannibal way, but in the serial killer way.
The place is Pennsylvania. We begin in a psychiatric hospital, where the kind-hearted doctor Karl (Rory Culkin) is promoted to give the convicted killer Jurek Walter (Stephen Graham) his daily medication. And this killer is so malignant, that his cell is located way below the building. It’s as deep as the building basement. And he has the doctor illegally passing messages on to him.
There’s also a missing boy named Michael Frost (Landon Valentin) who is wandering around the woods and is discovered on a bridge. But his sister Felicia is still missing. When the war vet and former homicide detective Jonah (Liev Schreiber) hears about this from his agent goddaughter Saga (Zazie Beatz), he gets back in the game by joining the agent in charge Quinn (Poorna Jagannathan). And he’s still convinced Jurek has something to do with the missing kids.
There’s a subplot where Saga has to pose as an arsonist committed to the same mental hospital in order to find out who is Jurek’s inside man. The worst part is when she deals with an abusive orderly, who would inject her medicine in the wrong place by force, but the best is when she goes all “Terminator 2” on his ass and when she makes contact with Jurek.
And we also get Bill Camp as the disenchanted police chief Ellison, who is caught in the middle of all this, as well as Chrissy Metz as the Frost mother Ida, whose returned son may be in contact with an entity or accomplice by the name of the Sandman. I can barely tell which it is at this point, but either way, the mother worries about his strange behavior.
“Nocturne” keeps us watching with how the mind of a serial killer plays out. Is he a killer on his own or by a mental problem? Either way, Jurek keeps us alert every step of the way, and Graham convinces us of that nature. We also get Schreiber continuing to excel as an actor, and he delivers with his tone and dialogue as the main sleuth. And Beatz is also entertaining and whip-sharp when she finds herself in dangerous territory.
As I’ve mentioned, there are times when we do get stressed out by the mental hospital undercover plot, but it knows how to pay off. The show is also based on the Joona Lina novel “The Sandman” by the married Alexander Ahndoril and Alexandra Coelho Ahndoril under their pseudonym Lars Kepler. And it plays whatever crime game is thrown at the viewers with haunting, riveting, and dangerous intentions. This is another series worthy of being in AppleTV’s library.
Streaming on AppleTV
