Nocturne: Stephen Graham’s serial killer is ‘utterly mesmerising’

There aren’t many shows that can claim to be as “straightforwardly creepy” as Apple TV’s “Nocturne”, said the Financial Times.

The 10-part drama is based on two book from the bestselling “Joona Linna” series by Lars Kepler (the pen name of husband and wife co-authors Alexander Ahndoril and Alexandra Coelho Ahndoril), with the setting transported from Sweden to the suburban town of Fairhaven, Pennsylvania.

Here, in the “bowels of a secure psychiatric hospital”, we meet Jurek Walter (Stephen Graham) – “a calculating and manipulative serial killer with an unsettling singsong voice” who is locked away indefinitely. But when one of Walter’s last presumed victims stumbles out of the woods “filthy, half-starved and mute with shock”, the boy’s reappearance poses a new question: “If Jurek has been under lock and key all this time, then how is he still pulling the strings?”

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Old wounds resurface for the detective who was in charge of the case, Jonah Lynn (Liev Schreiber). The former policeman turned recluse comes out of retirement to try to figure out whether the boy’s missing sister is still alive. He is helped by his god-daughter Saga (Zazie Beetz), who is a top FBI agent willing to go undercover in a psychiatric hospital to get close to Walter.

But the pair soon find themselves “trapped by Jurek’s mind games once more”, and the show unfurls with “pulsating, edge-of-your-seat suspense”, said AV Club. The “effectively claustrophobic” production design helps to “amplify the dread” but it’s Graham’s performance as Walter that really dials up the “creepy factor” of the “superbly disturbing” thriller.

“It has taken a while but I think the torch may finally have passed from Anthony Hopkins as the screen’s most profoundly unsettling and instantly-absorbed-by-the-cultural-imagination serial killer,” said Lucy Mangan in The Guardian. Oddly still and “occasionally emitting a high-pitched giggle”, Graham’s Walter gives Hannibal Lecter a run for his money. He is both “mesmerising and utterly terrifying” to watch.

The show is not without its “puzzling moments” and “plot contrivances”, said Variety. But even amid its more “far-fetched” storylines the show remains “thoroughly captivating” throughout. “Intensely haunting and totally shocking, ‘Nocturne’ keeps its cards close to its chest as it pushes the audience towards a staggering conclusion.”