This week’s picks include Stephen Graham as a menacing serial killer in the worthy thriller Nocturne, plus Hamish Blake tries to lend a hand in Unskilled Adult, while Making Marie Antoinette goes behind the scenes of Sofia Coppola’s iconic film and Ethan Hawke returns in the comedy noir The Lowdown.
Nocturne ★★★ (Apple TV)
Filmed shortly after Adolescence rattled the world, Nocturne is a victory lap for Stephen Graham, who elevates Apple TV’s latest indistinct thriller into a worthy watch with his menacing portrayal of a manipulative, meticulous serial killer. Renowned for raw portrayals of men at the brink of collapse long before co-creating and starring in Adolescence (This Is England, Boiling Point), the British actor tempers decades of raw energy into Jurek Walter – a psychopath who presents as diabolically relaxed and controlled.
Locked away in a psychiatric facility after unleashing terror on a small Pennsylvanian town, Walter relishes his powers of manipulation. In Nocturne’s opening scene, he successfully taunts – using just words – a neighbouring inmate into an act of self-harm.
For that reason, he’s not supposed to talk to anyone, though he breaks out a giggle and creepy childish voice to lure in new nurse Karl (Rory Culkin, the younger brother of Macaulay and Kieran). Karl is immediately identified as an easy target, the sunken sadness in his eyes giving away a weakness: an empathy not yet eroded by the job.
Where a lesser actor might have pushed harder on the creepy voice without reason, Graham uses it only how Walter would: as a trap. Walter’s hackneyed stereotype of a patient needing help proves catnip for a do-gooder like Karl.
Graham’s magnetism wouldn’t work without Nocturne’s steady reveal of Walter’s masterplan, the audience discovering puzzle pieces as investigators do. Creators Rowan Joffé (Tin Star) and John Hlavin (Shooter) clearly have a great sense for pacing, never relying on the Scandi-noir gloom of the show’s source material – Swedish novel series Joona Linna – to provide suspense alone.
What is immediately clear, both to viewers and grizzled ex-cop Jonah (Liev Schreiber), is that nothing is by chance. When a missing boy suspected to be one of Walter’s victims walks out emaciated from a Pensylvannia forest three years after Walter was imprisoned, Jonah and the audience both know that it’s the first move of a bloody chess game.
He and his goddaughter FBI agent Saga (Zazie Beetz, Joker) volunteer to help find the boy’s sister, kidnapped at the same time. Both scarred by Walter’s crimes, the two regularly break protocol to follow their instinct, including Saga going undercover as a patient at Walter’s asylum.
Like many Apple TV shows, Nocturne is solid but unassuming. It doesn’t puff up its importance with prestige flair, nor is it insultingly twist-led or designed for second-screen viewing. Across the seven of 10 episodes available for review, Nocturne’s cop cliches and clunkier moments were easy to forgive, with Graham and the cast – including Chrissy Metz (This Is Us) as the returning boy’s mother – firing on all fronts.
Unskilled Adult (Stan*) ★★★
Hamish Blake’s new show, essentially a series of DIY tasks, is baffling even to Blake at first. In the pilot, he’s understandably overwhelmed over how to use power tools and build planter boxes to a tight deadline while cracking jokes. Unskilled Adult’s premise is that Blake, after decades as a comedian and TV personality, is now a 44-year-old with no practical life skills outside of talking – something non-famous people can also relate to, given Google’s robbed our need to retain basic information.
Across each of the show’s eight 50-minute episodes, Blake and a rotating cast of comedians and entertainers take on an odd-job sent in by a stranger that they possess none of the know-how or technical skills to pull off. Sophie Monk and Dom Littrich (Inspired Unemployed) help Blake take on panel beating; Anne Edmonds and husband Lloyd Langford work on welding a surfboard stand for a surf-lifesaving club; Ryan Shelton and Susie Youssef cater for an 80-person wedding.
After the first episode, Unskilled Adult is far funnier than a show featuring several paint-drying scenes should be. If anything, that the show grows into itself mirroring Blake’s compounding skill-set and confidence each episode is genuinely quite sweet to witness.
While its low-fi looks and casual hang-out tone feel much more better-suited to YouTube than a standard TV show, I suspect it’ll find most of its audience via social snippets anyway.
Making Marie Antoinette (Mubi) ★★★★★
Marking 20 years since Sofia Coppola’s subversively stylised masterpiece, Making Marie Antoinette is a posthumous documentary from her mother Eleanor Coppola – best known for Hearts of Darkness, a behind-the-scenes look at Apocalypse Now’s notorious production. With far less drama on Sofia’s set, this is a much more gentle watch.
It’s more like a Coppola family vacation video, albeit with 1700s costuming. Eleanor’s admiration for her daughter’s creative talents shines through every shot, though the film, finished by Sofia after Eleanor’s death in 2024, is really a two-way tribute. It’s immensely touching and understated, with Diane Lane narrating from Eleanor’s diaries.
Storm Bird (Stan*) ★★★
Set and shot in Far North Queensland, Storm Bird is an intriguing debut from Australian filmmaker James Ivor, co-directed with Eryk Lenartowicz. Ivor plays Jack, a laconic construction worker who, facing jail-time, focuses on drinking. Those plans are interrupted when he saves his older neighbour, classical composer Richard (Anthony Phelan, Top of the Lake), from a heart attack. Having previously written off Richard as pompous, Jack is drawn into his life – as is Carla (Serena Ven Sandalwood), a writer visiting from New York. A sweet character study, suffused with tropical heat and small, well-studied details.
It Gets Worse (Binge) ★★★★
For once, the comparisons to Girls are apt – and not just because British comedian Leo Reich’s sardonic sitcom about 20-somethings in London features Lena Dunham as a guest star. With six episodes under 30 minutes, It Gets Worse is as brash, bold and unflinching as its protagonist Ethan (Reich), a self-obsessed gay man who, as per the narration by Zadie Smith, has had “one of the easiest lives in human history”. The messiness – outrageous sex scenes, anarchist warehouses, boring boyfriends – is fun but, as with Girls, there’s a generational gut-punch to the chaos.
The Lowdown (Disney+) ★★★★
Ethan Hawke’s charisma paved over the uneven edges of The Lowdown’s first season, a comedy-noir set in Oklahoma from Sterlin Harjo (Reservation Dogs) focused on Lee Raybon (Hawke), a shaggy amateur journalist and deadbeat dad who follows a head-spinning and history-spanning conspiracy through history. Season two streamlines things with one question: how can a man disappear from jail records? To find out, Lee teams up with Ginger (Betty Gilpin, GLOW): a glamorous public defender who, much like the audience, is equally attracted and frustrated by Lee’s reckless passion for the truth.
*Stan is owned by Nine, the publisher of this masthead.
Want more TV? We’ve got you.
Disclaimer : This story is auto aggregated by a computer programme and has not been created or edited by DOWNTHENEWS. Publisher: www.smh.com.au
