‘Nocturne’ intrigues with a stellar cast that grounds a sometimes implausible mystery

There are a number of ways, substantial and superficial, that “Nocturne,” a sort of murder mystery premiering Friday on Apple TV, announces itself as a class act.

Let’s begin with the title. The series Americanizes the internationally successful 2012 novel “The Sandman” and its 2018 sequel “Lazarus” by Lars Kepler, the pen name of the wife-and-husband team of Alexandra Coelho Ahndoril and Alexander Ahndoril. The word “nocturne,” typically used to describe music, poetry or paintings made to evoke a pensive, nighttime mood, must have seemed vaguely analogous to “Sandman,” which was already the title of a TV show. And though this show is indeed moody, with moody characters, it’s hardly got the atmosphere of say, Chopin’s Opus 27, No. 1 in C-sharp minor, or James McNeill Whistler’s “Nocturne in Black and Gold: The Falling Rocket,” or Federico García Lorca’s “Sleepless Night [Brooklyn Bridge Nocturne].” But it does betoken a certain classiness.

The setting is a western Pennsylvania small town called Fairhaven — ironically, given the less than idyllic new and old business we’re about to witness. The series has been shot where the story is set, rather than in some look-not-quite-alike quarter of Canada or Georgia, and there is no better favor a producer can do for a production — it spells commitment. Whether or not viewers are familiar with the actual setting, they may still sense its authenticity and how the environment shapes the action.

That catnip cast makes the series immediately interesting, not to say irresistible. Stephen Graham plays our villain, Jurek Walter, a serial killer imprisoned in solitary confinement in a concrete cell in the basement of a psychiatric hospital but apparently still working his will on the world. Graham’s appeared in all sorts of parts in many kinds of projects — perhaps you first noticed him as Al Capone in “Boardwalk Empire” — though his profile was raised considerably last year with the double shot of “Adolescence,” which he co-wrote and starred in, and for which he was thrice honored with Emmys, and the Victorian boxing drama “A Thousand Blows.” (My wish for him, especially after “Nocturne,” is a nice romantic comedy.)

Liev Schreiber plays our hero, ex-Army Ranger, ex-Philadelphia detective, ex-Fairhaven cop Jonah Lynn, locally revered, beloved and pitied (his wife and child died in a car accident). Schreiber, who was the Hollywood fixer in the excellent “Ray Donovan,” came on my radar in 1999 when John Lahr profiled him for the New Yorker as the actor was preparing to play Hamlet, and I have been tracking him ever since.

Zazie Beetz, who provided practically the whole of the female element in “Atlanta,” plays our other hero, Saga Bauer, an undercover FBI agent and Jonah’s goddaughter. Her father, who was Jonah’s partner, killed himself after the disappearance of his wife, just to stir in some extra disaster to start. The supporting cast is strong, too, prominently featuring Bill Camp, Poorna Jagannathan, Chrissy Metz and Gary Carr.

To begin, Walter, who can communicate with a man in a neighboring cell via their shared plumbing, persuades him to run into a wall and knock his brains out, thereby establishing his bona fides as 1) a man who can get inside a person’s head and 2) someone for whom we need not spare an ounce of sympathy. Then Michael Frost (Landon Valentin), abducted three years earlier as a child with his sister, Felicia, and thought dead, suddenly reappears much the worse for wear, triggering a search for Felicia. (Bad winter weather is coming, starting a clock.) And we’re off.

Though he is no longer a cop, Jonah, who believes that Walter is somehow behind this, alibi notwithstanding, has never given up, covering a wall with relevant clips and photos in the customary way (the case “broke him,” says police chief Dave Ellison, played by Camp). Now he finds himself back on the hunt in an officially recognized unofficial capacity most everyone agrees is a good, or not a really bad, thing. The exception is Jagannathan’s territorial FBI special agent Alexandra Quinn, unimpressed by Jonah’s ability to recognize a mote of Pittsburgh slag cement in Michael’s hair, or to tell a sliver of Table Mountain pine from any other sliver of pine. She’ll find him annoying, until she finds him helpful.

Gary Carr and Bill Camp are among the strong supporting cast in “Nocturne.”

(Apple)

Saga comes to visit Jonah, gets involved in the case and has the very bad idea to go undercover at the hospital. (“You need someone on the inside, near Jurek.”) I was frankly unimpressed with how that place was run, especially when Karl (Rory Culkin), an empathetic new orderly and probably the most impressionable person in the place, is “promoted” into delivering Walter’s food and meds. (There is also a worker named Gary who exists merely to create obstacles by threatening litigation.) Much of what happens in the basement tends toward melodrama and feels especially far-fetched — it’s the horror movie component. Of course, bad decisions have to happen, or nothing will go wrong.

Obviously, judging by their ubiquity in pop culture, the world loves a psycho killer. I am good for the four minutes and 20 seconds it takes to play the Talking Heads song, but in general I have little patience with these bozos and whatever variation of “the devil made me do it” passes for motivation. I recognize their dramatic usefulness — cat-and-mouse, stop-them-before-they-kill-again, detective-meets-match — but as a class I find them tedious. Still, Graham is a great actor and as Walter, he’s as creepy as he needs to be, with some extra creepiness stirred in. With his high security lodging and soft way of speaking, he recalls Anthony Hopkins’ Hannibal Lecter (book reviewers noted the similarity), though there are times, when he rubs his bald head, I thought instead of Marlon Brando in “Apocalypse Now.” It’s no spoiler to say he’s going to try to escape, because there’s only so many sorts of mischief he can get up to in his bare cell and this is a 10-episode series. (Seven were made available to review.)

What happens above ground, in the world where people order coffee and offer coffee, is much more interesting. As the police chief, Camp is the series’ stealth MVP; an ordinary good cop and solid citizen, as close as Jonah has to a best friend, he keeps the series grounded. (Though there are intimations of some past … I don’t know, the police here just do their jobs, which I find comforting.) And as Jonah, Schreiber is at once contained and powerful, tall and straight, quiet and direct (which is not to say forthcoming), his brush mustache in an expressive dance with his eyebrows. (Saga will describe him as “kind of mopey, right about everything.”)

Well, it’s a mix. Lead director Tim Van Patten avoids cinematic overkill, framing the action in a natural, not a cinematic space. It can be pokey, but then things explode. (The pokiness is not in itself bad.) It can be implausible, but it’s more often intriguing. And there are those great actors. And coffee. And classiness.

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