{"id":661867,"date":"2026-10-30T16:58:08","date_gmt":"2026-10-30T16:58:08","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/661867\/"},"modified":"2026-10-30T16:58:08","modified_gmt":"2026-10-30T16:58:08","slug":"nocturne-series-premiere-recap-its-a-madhouse","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/661867\/","title":{"rendered":"Nocturne series premiere recap: It’s a madhouse"},"content":{"rendered":"

It\u2019s been over a decade since the Nordic noir genre of crime fiction began really flourishing on TV, with series like The Killing<\/a>, The Bridge<\/a>, and Trapped inspiring English-language remakes or U.S.-set dramas with similar snowy aesthetics. The new Apple TV drama Nocturne, on its surface, has a lot in common with those series: It\u2019s based on Lazarus and The Sandman, two of the Joona Linna novels by Lars Kepler (a pen name for the Swedish husband-and-wife team Alexander Ahndoril and Alexandra Coelho Ahndoril), and it\u2019s both dour and morally complex. But with its Philadelphia exurbs setting and prioritization of character drama (especially as it relates to grief and trauma), the show also calls to mind Brad Ingelsby series like Mare Of Easttown<\/a> and Task<\/a>.<\/p>\n

That\u2019s not to say Nocturne is off to quite as strong a start as those other shows; the opening pair of episodes feels a bit like a stretched-out premise pilot, taking nearly two hours to introduce the basic setup of the series and the various players. But there\u2019s certainly potential here, and several characters and relationships that seem like they could become more interesting as the show spends more time on them.<\/p>\n

\u201cLazarus, Come Forth!\u201d kicks off by introducing the show\u2019s central psychopath: serial killer Jurek Walter (Stephen Graham), who got locked away in the maximum-security Restricted Housing Unit of the Riverside Psychiatric Hospital after burying some people (including kids) alive three years ago. Graham immediately sells Jurek as a terrifying force: Not only is he physically imposing, the type of guy you\u2019d never want to encounter outside (or inside!) his cell, but he has a strange power over people. He\u2019s cool and commanding enough to convince a neighboring inmate to ram his head into a wall and kill himself just by speaking to the guy through a toilet.<\/p>\n

From there, the premiere builds out the ensemble gradually. There\u2019s Karl (Rory Culkin), a na\u00efve nurse \u201cpromoted\u201d to the RHU to administer Jurek\u2019s medications\u2014a task that also includes procuring hidden shivs and making sure Jurek doesn\u2019t swallow his own tongue after heavy sedatives. Karl quickly takes pity on Jurek despite the warnings not to open up to the man, and he agrees to pass along a note to his lawyer.<\/p>\n

In a way, that\u2019s the inciting incident of the show, because it (possibly) directly leads to the release of Michael Frost (Landon Valentin), a boy who was abducted three years ago and presumed dead along with his sister Felicia. Now he\u2019s stumbling out of the woods in Fairhaven, PA, malnourished and nearly blind from being kept in the dark so long. What really happened to Michael, and could his sister still be alive? Those are the big questions.\u00a0<\/p>\n

From here, the show introduces the various law-enforcement characters on search-and-rescue duty: Fairhaven PD Chief Ellison (Bill Camp), a detective named Nathan Pollack (Gary Carr), FBI Special Agent in Charge Alexandra Quinn (Poorna Jagannathan), and, most notably, Jonah Lynn (Liev Schreiber), Nocturne\u2019s ostensible main character. Jonah is a former soldier who became a homicide detective, but he\u2019s retired to the quiet town of Fairhaven. Long story short: He and his alcoholic partner, Sam Mendel (Gabe Fazio), managed to take Jurek down\u2014but they never found the missing Frost kids and thus couldn\u2019t make the link despite the obvious timing. Worse, Sam seemingly took his own life after failing to solve the (likely Jurek-related) disappearance of his wife, Rebecca, an event that occurred just weeks after Sam and Jonah made their big arrest.<\/p>\n

Jonah has obviously been haunted by the loss of Sam and the unsolved Rebecca case, not to mention his promise to Michael and Felicia\u2019s mother Ida (Chrissy Metz) that he\u2019d find her kids, plus an entirely separate trauma: He lost his own wife and child in an accident. You know who else is dealing with a lot of baggage? Sam\u2019s daughter, FBI Agent Saga Bauer (Zazie Beetz). Saga (what a name!) is also a sort of surrogate daughter to Jonah, and it\u2019s obvious that the two will be working together on the Felicia Frost case before long. Much of these first two episodes is dedicated to setting that up, in addition to some side dynamics: the strange friendship between Karl and Jurek, or the tentative new buddy-cop dynamic between Jonah and Quinn.<\/p>\n

Many of the relationships on Nocturne have a lived-in feel so far; you get the sense that these people grew up together and still care for one another, no matter how much some of them want to escape their shared past. There\u2019s a slight dearth of warmth and humor, though, even given the dark subject matter. The aforementioned Ingelsby series allow you to bond with their protagonists almost immediately, but this show keeps some of its characters at arm\u2019s length. Jonah is a bit too stoic and inscrutable to really love so far, for example, even if his motivations mostly seem clear (though he seems to be keeping some secret about lying in court to get Jurek put away, which is already giving me unpleasant flashbacks to recapping Cape Fear). There\u2019s room for complexity with some of the characters, like the easily manipulated Karl and the hardened Saga, but it\u2019s not quite there yet.<\/p>\n

\u201cFor Such A Time As This\u201d has a clear narrative objective: Get Saga directly involved with the case. And sure enough, by the end, she has convinced both Agent Quinn and Jonah to let her enter the RHU undercover to get close to Jurek and \u201cfind the messenger\u201d collaborating with him. This is not a great idea, per se, especially because Michael deliriously mentioned seeing Rebecca, Saga\u2019s missing stepmom, while in captivity. But that only makes her more invested. Her new name will be Esther Dujardin, and she\u2019ll be drawing from her own mother to play a violent schizophrenic.\u00a0<\/p>\n

All of this sounds very promising for future weeks, though it feels a bit drawn-out: These two episodes contain a few circular conversations, like Saga taking to multiple people individually about Jonah and vice versa\u2014or Jonah consulting multiple potential sources of information, like a bus driver who once worked at Riverside, only to turn up nothing concrete on Jurek\u2019s communication system. Jonah\u2019s investigation into Sally Gifford, Jurek\u2019s day nurse who hasn\u2019t come into work for three weeks, also raises questions without promising much payoff in the near future.<\/p>\n

Still, there\u2019s plenty of material to work with here, especially now that Saga is locked up with the man at least indirectly responsible for the loss of her father and stepmother. Once Nocturne tightens up the pacing a tad and gets to what it\u2019s really about, we could have another really solid small-town crime drama on our hands\u2014no new setting necessary.<\/p>\n

Stray observations<\/p>\n

\u2022 I love Bill Camp, so I\u2019m curious what role the chief will play. So far, he brings a nice, slightly warmer energy than most of the cast, but he\u2019s not keen to see Jonah reopen any local wounds by chatting about Jurek Walter again.
\n\u2022 Karl\u2019s favorite song is \u201cRadioactive\u201d by Imagine Dragons? Seriously? Hard not to laugh at that one, but not sure it was meant to be funny. I need a bit more insight into Karl\u2019s whole deal.
\n\u2022 Some more humor, if you can call it that: Quinn requests an Americano with warm oat milk on the side\u2014I guess because she\u2019s an out-of-touch city-dweller\u2014and the waitress suggests \u201ca drip with milk from a cow\u201d instead. A very Yellowstone type joke.
\n\u2022 Jurek gets nurse Gary in trouble by planting a note on him, thereby saving Karl from possible jailtime. It\u2019s good manipulation, I suppose, but is it really enough to get Karl to keep doing his bidding? Again, I need to understand Karl better for some of these stakes to work.
\n\u2022 Supposedly Saga will get back her secret micro-transmitter contained within a cross after intake, because it\u2019s for \u201creligious reasons.\u201d But RHU does things their way, so it seems like a long shot. Maybe that cover story (that she set fire to a ward room with staff inside) was a little too intense.
\n\u2022 Not quite sure what to make of those symbols glimpsed simultaneously by Jonah and Saga in the closing moments of episode two. I guess the symbol on the trees is just meant to indicate that Jurek and\/or his associate is definitely behind the Giffords\u2019 disappearance, and that he doesn\u2019t mind people knowing it.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"It\u2019s been over a decade since the Nordic noir genre of crime fiction began really flourishing on TV,…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":661868,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[29],"tags":[146,85,46,411],"class_list":["post-661867","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-tv","tag-entertainment","tag-il","tag-israel","tag-tv"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/661867","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=661867"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/661867\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/661868"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=661867"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=661867"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=661867"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}