I know the forests of the Allegheny Mountains in western Pennsylvania. They are beautiful, especially in autumn, when the leaves change color, and the roads seem to disappear into the mountains. I lived in that region as a teenager, and there was always something unsettling about the landscape. The beauty, the silence, and the sense of isolation often reminded me of David Lynch’s Twin Peaks. It is the kind of place where everything seems peaceful, yet it takes very little imagination to believe that something terrifying might be hiding among the trees.

It is hardly surprising, then, that this same landscape plays such an important role in establishing the atmosphere of Nocturne, Apple TV’s new psychological thriller, which premiered on October 30 with two episodes. Filmed around Pittsburgh, the production uses small towns, dense forests, and the region’s industrial past to create a shadowy world where danger seems to lurk everywhere.

There is an immediate sense of familiarity. Pennsylvania has already provided the setting for Mare of Easttown and Task, both interested in the wounds of small American communities, although those stories unfold closer to Philadelphia. Nocturne moves west, where the isolation of the mountains and forests adds another dimension to the suspense. At the same time, its story recalls The Silence of the Lambs, Mindhunter, True Detective, and countless other narratives about serial killers, traumatized investigators, and crimes that seem to defy rational explanation.

It could easily be more of the same. And perhaps some of it is. But the first two episodes, directed by Tim Van Patten, offer enough reasons to keep watching.

The Boy Who Returned from the Dead

The story begins when a boy who disappeared three years earlier unexpectedly reappears alive, in circumstances that reopen an investigation believed to be over. His sister, abducted alongside him, is still missing. The possibility of finding her depends on a man who is already behind bars: Jurek Walter (Stephen Graham), a serial killer confined to a maximum-security psychiatric institution.

The case brings back Jonah Lynn (Liev Schreiber), a former soldier turned homicide detective who left the violence of Philadelphia behind in search of a quieter existence in rural Pennsylvania. The problem is that Jonah knows Jurek and understands that imprisonment does not necessarily mean the killer has lost his ability to inflict suffering.

The investigation suggests that Walter may have had an accomplice and that his influence continues to reach people beyond the institution’s walls. It is a particularly disturbing possibility: incarceration may not have stopped the criminal’s activities at all.

In an attempt to discover where the missing girl is being held, Saga Bauer (Zazie Beetz), an FBI agent and Jonah’s protégée, accepts a dangerous assignment. She infiltrates the psychiatric hospital, posing as a patient, hoping to get close enough to Jurek to extract information.

It is impossible not to think of Clarice Starling confronting Hannibal Lecter. The difference is that Saga cannot simply interview the killer from the relative safety of the other side of a security barrier. She must enter an environment he knows intimately and face a form of manipulation whose full extent she has yet to understand.

Stephen Graham and the Shadow of Hannibal Lecter

Stephen Graham’s presence is undoubtedly one of the series’ greatest attractions. After Adolescence, the actor once again explores a character connected to violence, although this time from a completely different perspective. Jurek Walter is not a man struggling to understand a family tragedy. He is someone who appears perfectly aware of the effect he has on other people.

Comparisons with Hannibal Lecter are inevitable, but they also reveal some interesting differences. Anthony Hopkins transformed Lecter into an almost aristocratic figure, endowed with exceptional intelligence, refined cultural tastes, and a perverse sense of humor. Graham takes another approach. His Jurek is less theatrical, almost ordinary at times, which makes him all the more unsettling.

His power lies neither in his physical appearance nor in displays of violence, but in his apparent ability to identify the emotional vulnerabilities of those who approach him. It is a threat built on language, observation, and manipulation.

His relationship with Karl Anders, an employee of the institution played by Rory Culkin, suggests one of the narrative’s most promising dimensions: how can a man who is supposedly deprived of his freedom exercise such control over others?

Liev Schreiber, meanwhile, gives Jonah the weariness of someone who has already endured too much and knows that an investigation can destroy those searching for answers as thoroughly as those trying to conceal them. Zazie Beetz completes the central trio with a character forced to balance courage, intelligence, and vulnerability in an environment where any display of weakness could become dangerous.

The cast also includes Bill Camp, Chrissy Metz, Poorna Jagannathan, and Gary Carr. Together, they help sustain the impression that far more is at stake than simply discovering the whereabouts of a missing child.

The Lars Kepler Novels

Nocturne is based on two crime novels, The Sandman and Lazarus, published under the pseudonym Lars Kepler, used by the Swedish husband-and-wife writing team Alexandra Coelho Ahndoril and Alexander Ahndoril.

The books belong to the series featuring detective Joona Linna and are part of the Scandinavian tradition of dark, violent thrillers built around complex investigations.

In The Sandman, the discovery of a young man who reappears after years of disappearance leads investigators to suspect that a girl may still be alive, held somewhere in captivity. The man responsible could be Jurek Walter, a criminal confined to a maximum-security institution whose influence appears to extend beyond its walls.

Lazarus returns to the world of this killer and explores the consequences of his relationship with the investigators, examining psychological persecution and the fear that threats believed to have ended might return.

The American adaptation relocates the story from Sweden to Pennsylvania, replaces Joona Linna with Jonah Lynn, and rearranges the relationships between the characters. Saga Bauer and Jurek Walter retain their names, but the setting and parts of the dramatic dynamics have been reimagined.

It is an interesting decision because Nordic noir has always made the landscape an extension of its characters’ conflicts. By replacing Scandinavian forests with the mountains of Pennsylvania, the series finds a setting capable of producing a similar effect, but with a distinctly American identity.

What the First Two Episodes Promise

The first two chapters, Lazarus, Come Forth! and For Such a Time as This, establish the main conflicts without fully revealing how they connect. The boy’s reappearance, the possibility of an accomplice, Jonah’s history with Jurek, and Saga’s decision to infiltrate the institution open several avenues of suspense.

For now, Nocturne‘s greatest challenge will be finding its own identity within a genre that has already explored virtually every one of these situations. We know the tormented detective, the manipulative killer, the young investigator exposed to danger, and the secrets that survive for years. Originality, therefore, is unlikely to lie in the premise itself, but rather in how the series develops these relationships.

There is also a question that particularly interests me: the tendency to portray serial killers as figures of almost superhuman intelligence, as though cruelty necessarily came with an extraordinary understanding of the human mind. Film and television have done this so often that the manipulative murderer has become a recognizable character type before he even opens his mouth.

Stephen Graham is talented enough to escape that trap. Whether the script allows his character to become something more than another version of Hannibal Lecter remains to be seen.

Meanwhile, the Allegheny forests are still there, as beautiful as they are threatening, providing an atmosphere that needs no explanation to become frightening. Perhaps that is the first two episodes’ greatest achievement: understanding that, in certain places, the setting already tells half the story.

With ten episodes scheduled for weekly release through Christmas, Nocturne earns a place on the watchlist as a thriller worth following. It is still too early to know whether it will manage to surprise us, but there is enough talent, atmosphere, and mystery to justify another visit to those woods.