Liev Schreiber's 'Nocturne' Gets a C, a Shrug and a Rave

Critics agree the Apple TV serial killer thriller is familiar but split on Zazie Beetz and whether its cast is enough.

Zazie Beetz's FBI agent goes undercover in a psychiatric hospital in Apple TV's "Nocturne," and the critics can't agree on whether she pulls it off.

In her Oct. 29 review for The Hollywood Reporter, Angie Han called Beetz's Saga "easily the most compelling element" of the series. The same day, Ben Travers wrote in IndieWire that she's "already unconvincing as an undercover FBI agent" well before the hospital, and he blamed a clumsily staged drug bust that introduces her. A day later, Aramide Tinubu of Variety called her phenomenal.

The rest of the reviews split the same way. We read all three trade reviews published around the 10-episode thriller's Oct. 30 premiere. Each critic was working from the seven episodes Apple sent out, and we weighted them equally. Nobody here has seen the show, so this verdict rests on theirs. They agree on nearly every flaw. They don't agree on whether the actors can paper over them.

Liev Schreiber plays Jonah, a retired Philadelphia detective still haunted by the case that put serial killer Jurek Walter (Stephen Graham) inside Riverside Psychiatric. Three years after two siblings vanished from Fairhaven, Pennsylvania, 12-year-old Michael Frost (Landon Valentin) turns up alive, but his sister Felicia doesn't. Police chief Dave Ellison (Bill Camp) calls in the FBI, Jonah's back on the case, and his goddaughter Saga gets herself admitted to Jurek's hospital as a patient.

Two of the three critics reach for the same yardstick. Han and Travers both call Jurek a Hannibal Lecter type, and Travers argues the show does little to get past "The Silence of the Lambs." He counts only a handful of brief scenes between Jonah and Jurek across seven hours and finds them more dutiful than electric. Han stacks it against "Mare of Easttown," "Task" and "Silence" and says it lacks the warmth of the first, the earnestness of the second and the tension of the third.

The clearest sign the critics agree is that even the rave lists the holes. Tinubu notes that nurse Karl (Rory Culkin) keeps breaking hospital rules for Jurek without security noticing, and that Jonah runs an investigation nobody's paying him to run. She still calls the show "a wildly entertaining ride that gets better with every episode," and she singles out episode three, "Eyes on the Inside," as especially disturbing. Han found some reveals clever in the moment and shaky on reflection. Travers says the last episode critics got settles for the easiest explanations available.

So it comes down to the cast, and there the critics scatter. For Tinubu, Graham's Jurek is the glue: without him, in her telling, the series would come apart, and he lifts it past what she expected. Han finds him reasonably unsettling, a mix of hulking body and soft-spoken calculation. Travers likes that Graham doesn't overdo it, but he saves his loudest praise for two actors further down the call sheet.

His favorite moment comes in episode seven. That's when Ken Leung shows up as an FBI boss in a houndstooth overcoat and tries to pull rank on Camp's black-eyed, scruffy small-town chief. Travers calls the turf fight more memorable than almost every one before it. He also enjoys Schreiber's try at a Delaware County accent, the kind "Mare" and "Task" taught critics to listen for. Beetz, he notes, doesn't attempt one.

Of the three critics, Travers is the only one who names the person who built this cast: casting director Avy Kaufman. "If you hire invested, eminently watchable actors, they can make tired tropes sing," he wrote in IndieWire. Han is harder to win over. She finds the show watchable but never gripping, and she closes on the point that a series worshipping two supposedly brilliant men doesn't show much brilliance of its own.

The critics' verdict: One rave, one shrug and a C from IndieWire, the only letter grade of the three. Two of the three describe a handsome, familiar Lecter riff with holes in it. Even the C comes with a concession: Travers says the people on screen make "Nocturne" a little better than it has any right to be. New episodes arrive Fridays through the Dec. 25 finale.

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Source: IndieWire, retrieved November 4, 2026. Other sources: The Hollywood Reporter, Variety.