‘Nocturne’ Review: Stephen Graham and Bill Camp Brighten Up Apple’s Staid Crime Thriller for Sad Dads

Three scenes in “Nocturne” nearly knocked me out of my chair: two from excitement, one from exasperation. For a bit of fun, read on and guess which scene inspired which reaction. Or I hope it’s fun, at least, because the dour “Nocturne” is only fun for die-hard fans of the genre — and its cast. The first stand-out scene will arrive at a different time for every viewer, but for me, it’s shortly after onscreen text identifies the setting as “Fairhaven, Pennsylvania.” That’s when the buzzer goes off, the one that formed in critics’ minds after “Mare of Easttown” and “Task” helped popularize the sound of Delaware County. Now, any show set in the Keystone State — especially a crime show — starts on high alert for lowly accents. And “Nocturne” does not disappoint. “What are yoo doing here?” Jonah (Liev Schreiber) asks his surrogate daughter, Saga (Zazie Beetz), when she shows up to tell the retired cop that his last case — the case that “broke him” (Beetz doesn’t use an accent, so she says her O’s sans inflection) — is active again. One of two missing kids has been found. The clock is ticking to find the other. The cops already called in the feds (specifically, Poorna Jagannathan’s zero-fucks special agent in charge), but they don’t know what Jonah does! “I know yoo suffered, and yoor life was ohver,” Ida (Chrissy Metz) tells Jonah, begging him to look for her missing kids one… last… time. So he does! Of course he does. The man is living in a cabin with a giant murder board on the wall, hiking the woods with the faintest hope he’ll stumble across the siblings he was assigned to find oh so many years ago. If that’s not enough evidence that Jonah is haunted, he’s also building a treehouse for his own absent family, who Saga says won’t be back. What happened to them, and why Jonah remains obsessed with this one unsolved case, are details that get slowly dripped out, like in every other sad-dad detective show that stretches a movie-length premise over 10 hourlong episodes. But hearing that sweet murder-durder voice spring ferth from Ray Donovan is, quite frankly, werth the price of admission for those of us holding an outsized appreciation for actors attempting difficult regional dialects. To be honest, there could be more. Beetz, despite her character growing up in the area, uses her regular voice, perhaps because Saga is an undercover FBI agent who needs to live with a less telling, more neutral intonation. Or perhaps because Beetz is already unconvincing as an undercover FBI agent, introduced via a poorly staged drug bust that hangs the actor out to dry, long before she struggles to match Stephen Graham‘s serial-killer freak. Stephen Graham in ‘Nocturne’Courtesy of Apple TV Ah yes, there’s a serial killer. The missing kids tie back to Jurek Walter, played by the “Adolescence” Emmy winner with an accent. In the rare instances he speaks, that’s quite fun: a quiet mix of carefully considered words metered out in whispered spurts and soft, equally sporadic vowel sounds. As the Hannibal Lecter type — a brilliant, terrifying killer whose positioning behind bars does little to dissuade our detectives from believing he’s still actively offing people out in the world — Graham doesn’t overdo it. His archvillain, who likes to bury people alive almost as much as he likes psychologically manipulating folks into self-harm, channels his sinister vibes with steady stares imbued with confidence. He likes to show off how much he knows about strangers through observation alone, and then uses those same skills to lure them into his devious plans. But I digress. “Nocturne” does little to distinguish itself from the oft-copied “Silence of the Lambs” dynamic. Jonah and Jurek share only a handful of brief scenes together through the seven episodes screened for critics, and their moments together feel less electric than perfunctory. Co-showrunners John Hlavin and Rowan Joffé give their actors room to play, but within the bounds of a faux-prestige crime thriller (based on the Swedish novel “The Sandman” by Lars Kepler). Vivid locations (go birds), a solemn tone (so dark, so serious), and a talented cast are as capital-B Big as “Nocturne” gets. At least, so far: The last episode screened for critics finally puts a few clarifying cards on the table, and those major reveals are both clichéd and annoying. I shan’t spoil them here, but how “Nocturne’s” mystery starts to resolve itself betrays the creeping, detailed investigation that makes up a bulk of the story by settling for the easiest and most obvious explanations possible. Astute viewers will likely spot warning signs much sooner, when characters make unearned assumptions to move things along, or when all-too-convenient mistakes occur to string out necessary questions for another few hours. “Nocturne” relies on its premium-streaming trappings to gloss over these glitches, and depending on your love for the dirty crime drama they’re polishing, they may be an acceptable price to pay for such pleasures as my third-and-final dumbfounding delight: Bill Camp, who plays Fairhaven police chief Dave Ellison, and Ken Leung, as some FBI big-wig, in the same scene! Together! Camp and Leung! The dynamic duo you didn’t know you needed! Better still, there’s reason to believe they’ll share multiple scenes together, as Leung doesn’t appear until the seventh episode, and Camp is in the whole damn show! Gary Carr and Bill Camp in ‘Nocturne’Courtesy of Dennis P. Mong Jr / Apple TV Herein lies the not-so-secret sauce behind well-cast genre fare (shout-out to casting director Avy Kaufman): If you hire invested, eminently watchable actors, they can make tired tropes sing. Sure, it’s far more exciting to see Leung sink his teeth into a layered, complex, and specific role like he has on “Industry,” but in a few short seconds here, as the big-city suit trying to flex on a small-town cop, he can still snap you back to attention. Your drifting focus picks up on a sly note of sarcasm when he questions the locals’ unique methodology. Your drooping eyes fixate on his calculated gaze as it darts around the office before landing, again and again, on the supposed colleague he’s blatantly interrogating. His physical presence, aided subtly by his refined houndstooth overcoat and matching gray buzzcut, clashes with the unkempt cop before him — which, it must be said, only makes it funnier when Camp presents his bulging black eye, shaggy crop of hair, and stubbly, unamused face directly to Leung’s sharp, clean, superior officer, as if to say, “Do you really think your fancy clothes and bossy attitude can intimidate me?” And Leung wordlessly responds, “I don’t care.” The scene is a classic jurisdictional dispute, plain and simple. But Camp and Leung bring just enough personal vehemence and lived-in decision-making to make this clash more memorable than 99 percent of the 99 million that preceded it. That’s why you hire them. That’s why you hire the actor Richard Price hired to root Stephen King’s mystical boogeyman story in an irrefutable reality in “The Outsider.” That’s why you hire the actor Chris Mundy and Damon Lindelof hired to ground the shape-shifting alien mystery in “Lanterns.” That’s why you hire the actor Jonathan Demme hired to help legitimize the crazy mind-control plot in “The Manchurian Candidate.” (OK, I guess Denzel helped a bit, too.) As The New York Times’ chief TV critic James Poniewozick likes to say, you can’t turn a bad show into a good show simply by hiring good actors. “Nocturne” proves that as much as any single show can. But for anyone in the tank for a grim cop vs. killer story, it’s just a little bit better than it should be thanks to the people in front of the camera. These folks know how to get a scene on its feet — and how to make an audience follow suit. Grade: C “Nocturne” premieres Friday, October 30 on Apple TV with two episodes. New episodes will be released weekly through the finale (Episode 10) on December 25.