Lots of excellent streaming TV these days. Just today, Dark Matter's season 2 finale was up on Apple TV, Dexter: Resurrection season 2 debuted on Paramount, MobLand's episode 2.7 was up on Paramount, and Nocturne debuted its first two episodes on Apple. I saw and immensely enjoyed all of them. I reviewed Dark Matter and Dexter: Resurrection, will review all of season 2 of MobLand when it concludes, and here I am with a review of Nocturne. Good thing it's Friday.
Nocturne is a powerful detective series (adapted from The Sandman and Lazarus novels -- which I haven't read -- by Lars Kepler -- pen name for Swedish writer couple Alexandra Coelho Ahndoril and Alexander Ahndoril) and has True Detective vibes. Liev Schreiber is Jonah Lynn, a retired, somewhat burned-out detective who gets sucked back into a kidnap case when one of the two kids shows up staggering across a bridge in Fairfield, a small fictitious town in western PA. His nemesis is Jurek Walter (played by Stephen Graham, with a perfect American accent), who's been in a high security prison for three years, and has a way getting into people's heads -- including guards -- and getting them to do his bidding. The FBI is involved (it's a kidnapping case), as is the daughter (Saga Bauer played by Zazie Beetz) of Jonah's partner who took his own life.
The incandescent acting of Schreiber and Graham works especially well in the rural Pennsylvania locale, which lends Nocturne a Mare of Easttown, American Rust, and even a side of Task flavor, which complement its True Detective and Nordic Noir tones. The key questions at this point are how much will the freed boy be able to tell Jonah and the police, who is Walter's accomplice on the outside, and how powerful is the mental control Walter has with those on the inside he has chosen to enlist with hypnotic effect.
I'm looking forward to see how this all plays out.
