Apple TV's Nocturne is Nordic noir by the numbers
Apple TV's Nocturne has just enough serviceable storytelling and professionally lit scenes to lull you into habit-viewing. But after several episodes of uninspired reveals you might suddenly come to your senses and ask: "Wait, why am I watching this?"
Stephen Graham's foreboding villain can't elevate this series above genre's complex and macabre conventions
Jackson Weaver · CBC News
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If it wasn't for Adolescence star Stephen Graham's involvement as a mendacious, menacing serial killer, you likely wouldn't have heard of Nocturne.
Then again — this being an Apple TV show after all — you might not have heard of it anyway. Not to say the streaming also-ran doesn't have at least some must-watch TV: just ask your friends obsessed with Slow Horses or obsessively awaiting just one more season of Severance.
But for every Ted Lasso, there seem to be two or three Cape Fears: standard streaming-fare releases that, while high budget and adequately designed, don't do much to demand viewing.
If you do choose to amble through, there is just enough serviceable storytelling and professionally lit scenes to lull you into habit-viewing. It's only after several episodes of uninspired reveals you suddenly come to your senses and ask: "Wait, why am I watching this?"
Which could function as the be-all-end-all description of Nocturne. Adapted from crime novels The Sandman and Lazarus by Lars Kepler, it follows the conventions of its "Nordic noir" progenitors to a painful T.
WATCH | Nocturne trailer:
First, we have a typically unsettling mystery. Who could be kidnapping people and burying them alive with just enough food and water to ensure they die slowly? And why have they seemingly released young Michael (Landon Valentin), who is discovered stumbling back into town years after he and his sister disappeared?
The No. 1 suspect would be Jurek Walter (Graham), given he was convicted for exactly these types of crimes long ago. However, aside from using his borderline supernatural powers of manipulation to convince his cellmate to bash his head into the wall, Walter hasn't had much of an opportunity to make a nuisance of himself lately. And, of course, there's the fact he's been locked up in a psychiatric hospital for years.
So then there is the attempt to uncover the mystery, all mixed up with the necessary pathos and a dizzyingly interconnected cast of characters. There is Jonah Lynn (Liev Schreiber), the damaged ex-cop responsible for putting Walter away in the first place. There's FBI agent and undercover specialist Saga Bauer (Zazie Beetz) — Lynn's surrogate daughter tasked with posing as a patient to get closer to Walter.
Then there's the nervous but well-meaning nurse Karl (Rory Culkin), secretly delivering Walter's letters to his lawyer while obviously falling under the killer's carefully orchestrated spell. And there's also functional FBI agent/dysfunctional mom Alexandra Quinn (Poorna Jagannathan); bumbling but committed police chief Dave Ellison (Bill Camp); and Michael's fiercely committed but floundering mom Ida (Chrissy Metz).
All are plagued by past trauma and lingering, all-consuming pain. And all are involved in the complicated, interweaving plot to find Michael's sister Felicia before she runs out of time in her box below the dirt — assuming she's not already dead.
Zazie Beetz as Saga Bauer in a still from Nocturne. (Apple TV)
And so the "complicated" and "macabre" prerequisites for Nordic noir are satisfied. Transplanted from the books' Swedish setting to a small town in Pennsylvania, the brooding and bleak esthetics still jump to the fore. No one is allowed on screen without a broken and haunted expression.
Not a day is allowed to go by without oppressive, grey colour-grading — making the sky appear to constantly be seconds away from releasing a torrential downpour. And not a single attempt at well-meaning altruism is allowed to go unpunished by a vindictive, cruel universe — at least in the first two episodes of the 10-part series released Friday.
For all its considerable cliché, Nocturne is elevated by Graham. There is something uniquely menacing about what is clearly a Hannibal Lecter descendant: a chameleonic svengali who at times appears so emotionally blunted you wonder if he's actually awake; and who, at other times, gives such an entrancing performance of empathy you genuinely begin to wonder how easily such a monster could come to control you.
On the one hand, Graham's committedly unsettling performance offers at least one somewhat original aspect to Nocturne; on the other, the torturously subdued evocation of evil doesn't do much for the show's drama. It may put Walter in the running against No Country for Old Men's Anton Chigurh as the most realistic psychopath put to screen; but it does not put him in the running as the most entertaining.
As the show ping-pongs between interconnected storylines — and refuses to go as campily overwrought as the Hannibal series, from which Nocturne obviously borrows — Walter's weird, clown-like guffaws and subtle hints at violent intentions tend to get lost in the weeds.
What comes through more is the aimless voyeurism of the other genre Nocturne apes: true crime.
Graham himself detailed his research process as binging crime documentaries, while Apple TV opted to advertise the show in a similar way. "If you like true crime, you'll love this show," ad after ad claims; a testimonial Nocturne seems designed to satisfy.
That's because — completely separate from any debate about the ethics of mining crime for entertainment — the vast majority of true crime releases suffer from the same problem: gussying up incidental crimes as universally consequential and then artificially stretching out the mystery behind them to pad out an overlong end product.
As more and more characters stumble into an improbably interwoven crime, Nocturne feels ever more like a documentary you just never bothered to finish. Assuming the series follows the general plot of the novels, it all leads to a laughably predictable reveal — one that would make skipping the most time-conscious choice.
With only two episodes available, it may be too early to say. Nocturne's slow-burn start may evolve into something worthwhile, while Graham's performance and the tantalizing mystery at Nocturne's heart do offer just enough intrigue to draw you in.
Although, if you really wanted a good time, The Silence of the Lambs is right there.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Jackson Weaver is a reporter and film critic for CBC's entertainment news team in Toronto. You can reach him at jackson.weaver@cbc.ca.
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