Variety’s review of Apple TV’s Nocturne puts Rory Culkin at the center of its latest cast note, identifying him as Karl, the new nurse at Riverside Psychiatric Hospital. The 10-episode thriller, created by Rowan Joffé and based on Lars Kepler’s Lazarus and The Sandman, arrives with seven episodes screened for critics, leaving three still out of view.
That matters because Karl is not just another hospital employee in the setup. Jurek Walter, played by Stephen Graham, is confined at Riverside Psychiatric Hospital in rural Pennsylvania, and Karl works in the same place where Walter’s influence still reaches beyond his cell. The show also stars Liev Schreiber as Jonah Lynn, the former homicide detective pulled back into the case after the disappearance of Michael Frost and his sister Felicia comes back into focus three years later.
Jonah joins a task force headed by Special Agent in Charge Alexandra Quinn, with Nathan among the detectives and Saga Bauer bringing undercover experience to the group. The series moves between the past and the present and across locations in Pennsylvania, using Walter’s long shadow to tie the investigation together. It also leans on the idea that the missing were already thought to be among Walter’s victims, which gives the reopening of the case its urgency.
Still, the review does not treat Nocturne as a clean procedural victory lap. It calls the series suspenseful and compelling, but says some plot contrivances and preposterous scenes require a willingness to let go of disbelief. What anchors it, by that account, is Graham’s performance as Walter, which holds the show together even as the story stretches at the edges. For viewers, the unanswered question is less whether the show can build dread than how far Karl’s place in Walter’s scheme will eventually go once the final three episodes are seen.
