Nocturne Review

While watching the screeners for Nocturne, the upcoming psychological thriller series from AppleTV, I kept waiting to see when it would present the twist that would set it apart from every other story about a serial killer playing a cat and mouse game with a grizzled investigator. Unfortunately, that twist never materialized, and the series just kept chugging along down the same path of every other story like it. If you’ve seen Silence of the Lambs, you’ve seen Nocturne. If you’ve seen Seven, you’ve seen Nocturne. And in both of those cases, you’ve seen this framework executed with more interesting characters and a more charismatic killer as well.

Which is a real shame, seeing as Nocturne has a heck of an interesting cast on paper. Liev Schreiber plays Jonah Lynn, a retired homicide detective who tangled with our imprisoned killer, Jurek Walter (a good Stephen Graham from Adolescent), in the past and lost a heck of a lot in the process. Schreiber has the beat down look and the emotionally lost vibe down, but he’s given precious little to do early on and the character doesn’t pop the way you’d hope from your central star. Joining him in the quest to find out just what Walter might know about both a previous and a brand new missing persons case is Zazie Beets as Saga Bauer, an emotionally damaged FBI agent who has thrown herself into undercover work of late so she doesn’t have to come to terms with some personal losses. Which makes her yet another trope of a thriller. We also get members of a taskforce who are at cross purposes with Saga and Jonah (both of whom are either reckless or too close to the case to be involved in it), and staff at the mental institution where Walter has been locked up who may or may not be sucked into doing the bidding of the supposedly charismatic prisoner. (I, for one, never saw what was so mesmerizing about Walter and his influence that made folks trust him.)

If there is one interesting turn in the series, it comes from Beetz, who throws herself into her character and tries to push her into emotional and physical areas that one doesn’t usually see from women in thrillers. Normally, when presented with the emotionally closed off female officer, her arc is to become more in-tune with her emotions and overcome what ails her. That’s certainly not the case here, as Beetz is allowed to simply wall Saga off from the world and dive into her undercover work with gusto – taking chances and breaking rules the way we traditionally get to see male officers do. But it’s not enough to get me to recommend what amounts to a paint by numbers thriller.

Nocturne isn’t a bad show – it’s competently made, the cast is talented if underused, and the story is perfectly fine. It’s just not anything particularly special. With a cast like this one, I expected something more in terms of the characters than offering us tropes you could find in any thriller from the last thirty years. I was constantly thinking “Don’t do that,” “Don’t say that,” “That’s going to go poorly,” without much emotional investment in the outcome of the episode. With so many TV shows out there on so many different streamers, a show has to have a strong, original hook to really grab you. And Nocturne, which is based on the novels Lazarus and The Sandman by Lars Kepler, never manages to take us or the story anywhere interesting enough to warrant a recommendation.

Nocturne premieres on AppleTV on October 30. Six episodes were provided for review.