Nocturne review: Apple TV’s thriller has a psychopath behind bars and a mystery that’ll leave you shaken

I have watched enough serial-killer thrillers and investigative dramas to know what I enjoy about the genre. From Sherlock, Mindhunter and True Detective to The Mentalist, which remains an absolute favourite, I have always been drawn to shows that make the process of solving a crime as compelling as the crime itself. There is something particularly satisfying about watching an investigator pick up on a detail everyone else has overlooked, read a suspect’s behaviour and gradually piece together a story that refuses to reveal itself all at once. I have also come to believe that this is one genre particularly suited to the OTT space. The layered investigations, character histories and steady progression of clues give these shows an inherent binge appeal, often making it difficult to stop at the end of an episode.

Nocturne on Apple TV had me hooked almost immediately. I finished the premiere knowing I should probably call it a night, only to find myself fighting sleep because I wanted to watch the second episode straight away. Had Apple released the season all at once, this is exactly the kind of show I could have happily sacrificed a weekend to finish. The weekly release may eventually give the mystery room to breathe, but after two episodes, waiting for the next instalment feels more inconvenient than useful.

The setup itself is familiar enough. Jurek Walter (Stephen Graham), a notorious serial killer, is already confined inside Riverside Psychiatric Hospital when Michael Frost, a boy believed to have been one of his victims, suddenly turns up alive after being missing for three years. His sister Felicia is still missing, drawing retired detective Jonah Lynn (Liev Schreiber) back towards a case that has clearly never really left him. Meanwhile, Saga Bauer (Zazie Beetz), Jonah’s protégé and surrogate daughter, decides that the only way to understand Jurek’s possible influence over events outside Riverside is to get inside the institution herself.

The more intriguing part of the setup is that Jurek is already behind bars, yet the investigation suggests his influence may extend well beyond them. It gives Nocturne a compelling mystery to build on, and Stephen Graham makes for a particularly unsettling centre to it.

Stephen Graham is at his unsettling best

Jurek is the most compelling element of the first two episodes, and much of that comes down to how carefully the character has been constructed. Graham rarely gives him the exaggerated menace that serial-killer dramas often rely on. His voice remains measured, his body language controlled and his reactions surprisingly economical. The effect is that you begin watching the people around Jurek almost as closely as you watch him, looking for the moment when a conversation shifts and somebody realises they have given away more than they intended.

The opening sequence establishes this brilliantly. Jurek is physically separated from another inmate, yet manages to communicate with him through the pipes and, within a remarkably short span of time, gets far enough inside the man’s head for him to turn violently on himself. It is a brutal scene without becoming especially graphic, and the restraint is important. The horror comes less from the violence than from understanding how little Jurek appears to have done to bring it about. His real weapon is his ability to identify what another person needs, what they fear, and how those vulnerabilities can be turned into leverage.

Karl is the most immediate example. Rory Culkin gives him an underlying nervousness from the beginning, making it plausible that Jurek would recognise him as somebody who could be manipulated. The sequence involving the choking incident, another employee being implicated, and suspicion being redirected towards Karl demonstrates how quickly Jurek can work around the restrictions of a controlled environment. His line, “A truth for a truth”, is particularly revealing because it establishes the terms on which he wants every conversation to take place.

I do not think Nocturne is suggesting that everything Jurek says must be a lie. The more disturbing possibility is that there is truth in much of what he reveals, but he is always the one deciding which part of it another person gets to hear. His exchanges with Jonah carry a different weight because the familiarity between them is unmistakable. Jurek appears convinced that Jonah has withheld something about the original case, while Jonah’s responses do little to suggest that the history between them is as straightforward as one man catching another. Schreiber gives Jonah the weariness of someone who has carried an investigation for far too long, but also leaves enough uncertainty around him to make his motives difficult to read.

I am not yet sure how much I trust him, and that is a more interesting place for the character to be than simply presenting him as the brilliant retired detective who must be brought back because nobody else understands the killer. Graham’s performance also feels particularly interesting after Adolescence. As Eddie Miller, he played a father desperately trying to process the possibility that his teenage son had committed something horrific. Much of that performance depended on helplessness: Eddie wanted to believe his child, protect his family, and hold on to the life he understood, but events kept moving beyond his control.

Jurek is almost the complete reverse. He should be the person with the least control in Nocturne, confined underground and surrounded by people whose job is to contain him, yet Graham rarely lets him feel powerless. The contrast is not simply in the characters’ circumstances; it is in the way Graham uses attention, silence, and physical restraint to make Jurek seem capable of exerting control even when everyone else believes it has been taken away from him.

The wider cast is still finding its footing. Beetz gives Saga a calmer, more procedural quality than Jonah, and there is a discipline to the way she approaches an investigation once she has decided what needs to be followed. Jagannathan is another performer I was particularly interested in seeing here. I have watched her in Indian films over the years, but Nalini in Never Have I Ever remains the role I most immediately associate with her, largely because it allowed her to bring together grief, humour, protectiveness and emotional reserve without making the character feel inconsistent.

As FBI investigator Quinn, she is assured and provides a useful counterpoint to Jonah’s personal history, although the first two episodes have not yet given her much that distinguishes her beyond her role in the investigation. Michael, meanwhile, is still more important as evidence than as a fully developed character. His return establishes that the original understanding of Jurek’s victims may have been wrong, introduces the possibility of Rebecca’s involvement, and gives the investigators reason to believe Felicia may still be alive. The performances give the show a strong starting point, but Graham is currently leaving the most lasting impression.

Jurek’s influence may extend well beyond Riverside

One of the more effective ideas in Nocturne is the discomfort of watching investigators deal with somebody whose imprisonment has not actually ended his ability to affect events outside. Jurek may be physically contained, but the series keeps finding ways to remind us that confinement and control are not necessarily the same thing. His conversations with Karl are one part of that equation; the possibility that people connected to the old case are still acting on his behalf makes the situation considerably more complicated.

The dynamic immediately reminded me of Rosalind Dyer’s arc in The Rookie. Despite being incarcerated, Rosalind remained a significant threat through her influence over Caleb Wright, whose abduction of Lucy Chen turned the storyline into something much larger than simply questioning an imprisoned killer about her past crimes. The comparison is not that Jurek and Rosalind are the same kind of character. Nocturne is considerably darker and more psychologically focused. What connects them is the idea that catching a serial killer does not necessarily end the threat, particularly when the person in custody has spent years learning how to manipulate the people around them.

The visit to Sally Gifford’s home in Episode 2 gives this possibility a more tangible form. Sally, a former Riverside nurse connected to Jurek, has disappeared along with her family. Jonah finds evidence suggesting they did not leave under ordinary circumstances, begins to suspect somebody is watching him, and eventually follows a figure into the woods, where he discovers a strange symbol carved into a tree. Saga later finds the same marking inside her Riverside cell. The connection is intriguing because it raises the possibility that Jurek’s influence is not limited to the individual vulnerabilities he exploits in conversation.

I like that the show leaves several explanations open at this stage. The symbol could be directly connected to Jurek, belong to somebody working for him, or be used by a wider group of people. We also do not know how much Jonah understands about it, or whether his own history with the case has left him with information he has deliberately kept from the others. The series does not need to answer all of these questions immediately, but it does need to be careful about the direction it takes. Part of what makes Jurek so effective is the possibility that he does not need an elaborate network or organisation if he can persuade ordinary people to do what he wants. A larger conspiracy could add another dimension to the mystery, but it should not come at the expense of the psychological manipulation that has made him compelling so far.

The show’s visual restraint supports that approach. Nocturne is not particularly interested in making every violent moment more graphic than it needs to be, and the slower camera movements through Riverside’s corridors and empty rooms help sustain an atmosphere of unease. It is not a genuinely frightening show for me so far; I would describe it as tense and unsettling rather than scary. The pleasure is investigative. You want to know what might be around the corner because it could contain another piece of information, and once Jonah begins to feel watched, even an empty section of the frame is enough to make you look twice.

Saga is walking into exactly the kind of situation Jurek understands best

Saga is one of the characters I am most interested in watching as the investigation develops. She is methodical, composed, and determined to maintain control over the direction of a case once she has chosen a path. Even when somebody else has a convincing argument, she does not immediately abandon what she believes needs to be followed. I feel that her decision to go undercover at Riverside is more interesting than a straightforward investigative manoeuvre.

On one level, the operation makes sense. If Jurek is getting information out of the institution, somebody needs to get close enough to understand how. Saga volunteers, Quinn eventually agrees, and Jonah helps prepare her cover. The difficulty is that her reasons for wanting to get closer to Jurek are not entirely professional. Her father died by suicide after his own connection to the case, while the possibility that her missing mother, Rebecca, may also have been caught up in Jurek’s history makes the investigation deeply personal. Saga is entering Riverside believing she can stay focused, maintain her cover, and keep those experiences separate from the work, but Jurek has spent two episodes demonstrating how quickly he can identify precisely the kind of vulnerability she may be trying to conceal.

The undercover setup is slightly convenient for the plot, and the series will have to work hard to justify how long Saga can realistically remain inside such a high-risk environment without Jurek recognising what she is doing. However, the dramatic possibilities are strong. The investigators have spent the opening episodes showing us how Jurek gets inside people’s heads, and now they have placed somebody with an enormous personal stake in the case directly within his reach. I want the operation to test Saga’s judgement and investigative instincts, rather than relying only on the physical danger of being close to him.

Nocturne has more than one mystery to solve

The premiere is easily the stronger of the two episodes in terms of execution, performance, and momentum. Part of that comes from how much information it introduces without making the investigation feel static. Michael has returned, Felicia remains missing, Jonah is pulled back towards a case he clearly never escaped emotionally, Jurek appears capable of influencing people from confinement, and Saga has her own connection to the history surrounding the investigation. The FBI’s arrival adds another perspective to a case that local law enforcement may not have handled as cleanly as everyone wants to believe.

There is a slight overload to the premiere, but I enjoyed that feeling because it makes the investigation immediately active. You spend much of the episode trying to understand where all these people fit and what their roles might eventually become. Episode 2 has a different job to do. It needs to begin organising those pieces, provide more context for the relationships and establish how the renewed investigation might connect to events that happened years earlier.

Jonah’s history with Saga’s father becomes more important, Rebecca potentially enters the larger mystery when Michael refers to a woman called Becca who may have protected him and Felicia, and Jurek’s connection to the original investigation becomes messier. The police also begin confronting the possibility that the case they believed they had solved may not have been solved at all. Some of the premiere’s urgency inevitably falls away as the series starts putting these threads in place, but the second episode leaves the story in a wider and, in some ways, more intriguing position than it found it.

I would not call the pacing a problem yet. A mystery of this scale needs time to establish the relationships and the history behind the case, particularly when so many characters appear to be withholding information. The question is whether the series can make those connections feel earned as it moves forward, rather than relying on a steady supply of new clues to keep the investigation moving.

Riverside sometimes makes Jurek’s life too easy

My biggest reservation after two episodes is the way the writing occasionally makes the people and systems surrounding Jurek a little too convenient. The Karl storyline is where I felt this most strongly. The choking incident, the vomiting, the planting of evidence, and the suspicion being redirected towards another employee all happen with considerable efficiency. I understand what the sequence is trying to establish: Jurek can read a situation quickly, improvise, and protect the person he needs. However, Riverside is also supposed to be the institution designed to contain an exceptionally dangerous and psychologically sophisticated serial killer.

If Jurek repeatedly succeeds because the people around him are surprisingly easy to fool, the show risks weakening the very intelligence it wants us to recognise in him. I want to watch him outthink capable people and strong systems, rather than benefit from convenient gaps in their judgement. Karl’s continued cooperation could also use more development. I understand why Jurek sees him as vulnerable, but the speed with which that vulnerability turns into sustained involvement needs more convincing groundwork, particularly when the consequences of getting involved should be difficult to ignore.

Nocturne is really about who thinks they are in control

Underneath the serial-killer investigation, Nocturne is already developing a more interesting question about control. The institution believes it controls Jurek because he is physically contained. Karl may believe he can simply stop helping him, Jonah trusts his experience with the case, and Saga believes she can enter Riverside with a cover identity and keep her personal history out of the investigation. Quinn brings the confidence of procedure to a situation that is already complicated by old loyalties and unanswered questions. Jurek, meanwhile, seems interested in testing every one of those assumptions.

His lack of obvious aggression is central to why the premise works. He does not need to prove he is stronger than the people around him. He needs them to believe they are making their own decisions while quietly changing the conditions under which those decisions are made. The investigators may be trained, experienced and backed by an entire institution, but none of that necessarily means they understand the person they are trying to contain. Their confidence in their own ability to handle him could eventually become as important as Jurek’s talent for manipulation.

The first episode is the stronger introduction, but the second leaves the story in a more intriguing place. Saga is inside Riverside, Jonah has found a symbol that appears there too, Sally Gifford and her family are missing, Michael has introduced the possibility that Rebecca is connected to everything, and Felicia remains unaccounted for. There is enough material here to sustain the mystery without the show having to keep adding twists simply to make the story bigger. What I want now is for it to deepen the relationships, make Karl’s vulnerability more convincing, give Quinn a clearer identity within the investigation, and reveal what Jonah has been holding back.

Most of all, I want to understand how much of what is happening outside Riverside Jurek is actually controlling. The show has established that he is dangerous and that he understands people exceptionally well; the more consequential question is whether the investigators understand the difference between locking a psychopath inside a room and taking away his power. Two episodes in, I am not convinced they do, and if Episode 3 were sitting there after I finished the second one, I would happily give up a few more hours of sleep to find out.

Nocturne is now streaming on Apple TV.