REVIEW: ‘Nocturne’ Episode 1 & 2 Offer Tension and Mystery

In Nocturne Episode 1, a patient at Riverside Medical Hospital kills himself after another patient named Jurek Walter (Stephen Graham) encourages him. They talk to each other through the pipes that connect their cells’ sinks. Six months later, an empathetic nurse named Karl (Rory Culkin) is asked to work in the Restricted Housing Unit of the same hospital and is tricked into sedating Walter so his cell can be searched.

Walter preys on his sympathies and convinces him to smuggle a message to his lawyer. Meanwhile, a kid covered in dirt and grime stumbles in front of a semi on the Butler Bridge. He claims to be Michael Frost (Landon Valentin), a child who went missing three years ago. “Lazarus, Come Forth!” proclaims title. What happens when someone who is presumed dead comes back to life?

And how are these moments connected? How do these lives fit together? Great stories, and great crime dramas, are about the questions. They ask you to figure out why the world is the way it is, and how the characters came to be who they are. Whether the crime can be solved. Nocturne’s first two episodes are a slow-burn, which is a good thing. You don’t want a story like this to get to the conclusion too quickly. You want to marinate in it.

Nocturne Episode 1 dances with a slow-burning mystery. 

Michael’s survival (people who disappear, statistics show, tend to turn up dead or not at all) means that his sister Felicia might also be alive, and a case that has gone cold might heat up. It also drags Jonah Lynn (Liev Schreiber), the cop who worked the case before retiring after tragedy struck his own family, back to handle unfinished business.

Soon, his knowledge of the area has made him indispensable to Quinn (Poorna Jagannathan), who’s running the FBI’s search, though she isn’t sure whether he’s brilliant or crazy or both. Their dynamic is an uneasy one. Quinn clearly respects his work and acumen, but it doesn’t take much to see that he’s driven by pain he can’t let go of.

When he shows up to check up on Michael at the hospital “as a friend” and Michael’s mother, Ida (Chrissy Metz) tells him she doesn’t need a friend. What she needs is someone who can find her daughter; you can see the reaction reawakens something in it.

Schrieber does admirable work here; he looks tired, and he can sell how damaged Jonah is with a glance. But the real stars are Zazie Beetz as Saga, Jonah’s goddaughter and another FBI agent, and Graham. Beetz’s Saga is confident but not arrogant, empathetic but realistic, honest but kind, and she’s a joy on screen, especially in the scenes she shares with Schreiber.

Graham, on the other hand, is all warm flattery when he needs to manipulate someone like Karl and cold menace otherwise. He’s in that cell because he was responsible for burying several people alive, and his MO matches what happened to Michael and Felicity, but his incarceration means his alibi is undeniable.

Several moments in Nocturne’s first two episodes sing because of the details. Moments where Jonah and Nate (Gary Carr), another cop, search the abandoned building where Jonah believes Michael was held. It’s dark; the scene is lit almost entirely by their flashlights, but instead of being so dark that you can’t see, everything is smartly shot and color-graded, maintaining the tension while allowing you to track what’s happening.

Lieve Schrieber plays Jonah admirably and undoubtedly damaged. 

Quinn and Jonah’s interview with Walter amplifies that tension, often raising more questions than it answers. Does Walter know what’s going on, or is he just playing with them?

What’s the thing he covertly snags under the table? What, exactly, did Jonah lie about during the trial? A good crime drama closes old doors while it opens new ones, raising questions as it puts others to bed, and Nocturne Episode 1 pulls it off wonderfully.

Nocturne Episode 2, “For Such a Time as This,” follows up the first’s with a slower, more character-focused journey in which our characters’ sins begin to catch up with them. Karl’s decision to smuggle out Walter’s letter causes problems for everyone else in the facility, all seemingly engineered by Walter as part of a larger plan.

Saga’s decision to get involved (and go undercover at the facility where Walter is being held) puts a strain on Quinn and Jonah, though each is different. And the unraveling of what happened with Walter years ago brings up bad memories and fills in pieces of our characters’ pasts, many of which they would prefer to leave behind.

Apple TV hits an intentional pace with Nocturne Episode 1 & 2’s mystery, and that works. 

Nocturne’s speedy pace is very deliberate, but two episodes in, I’m impressed by how well-constructed everything is. There’s no shortage of character moments (which are, thankfully, left to linger and not bogged down by exposition that assumes you’re on your phone the whole time) that delve deeper into their past and raise as many questions as they answer, nor any shortage of tension or mystery. Still, these episodes fly by. I was always shocked when the credits rolled.

Surely it hadn’t been an hour already? But it always had been, and I left both episodes wanting more. High praise, two episodes in, but I’m already very interested in what happens next, and grateful this series is taking its time and both content to pause in smaller moments and move its plot forward without rushing. See you next week.

Nocturne Episodes 1 & 2 are streaming now on Apple TV, with new episodes every Friday through December.