James Oconner 
Anil Krishna 
Jonathan Millar 
Apple TV’s Nocturne Could Be the Psychological Crime Thriller Mindhunter Fans Have Been Waiting For
© Apple TV+
It has been a long time since Mindhunter disappeared, and crime TV has never quite filled that particular hole. There have been plenty of serial-killer shows since, obviously, but very few that understood how unsettling a quiet conversation could be. David Fincher’s series didn’t need a killer running around with a knife every five minutes to keep you nervous. Sometimes it was just two people sitting across a table, talking far too calmly about something horrible. That’s what made it work. And, yes, the fact that Holden Ford and Bill Tench never got that third season still annoys people for a reason.
Now Nocturne looks like it might at least be worth keeping an eye on. The Apple TV thriller premieres October 30, 2026, with Liev Schreiber, Zazie Beetz and Stephen Graham at the center of a serial-killer investigation that seems much more interested in the psychology of the case than endless car chases and gunfire. It isn’t Mindhunter, and pretending otherwise would probably be unfair to both shows. But the trailer does tap into something that made Fincher’s series so compelling: the closer you get to a dangerous person, the harder it becomes to know where the investigation ends and the obsession begins.
The Hunt for Jurek Walter
The story revolves around Jurek Walter, a serial killer played by Stephen Graham, and things take a nasty turn when one of his victims, long believed to be dead, suddenly turns up alive. That discovery raises the possibility that another missing person could still be out there somewhere. Detective Jonah Lynn (Liev Schreiber), a former soldier who left Philadelphia hoping for a quieter life in rural Pennsylvania, gets dragged back into the nightmare when Walter starts targeting people Jonah considers family. So much for the quiet life.
The person who may have the answers is FBI agent Saga Bauer (Zazie Beetz), who has a close relationship with Jonah and is essentially his surrogate daughter. Saga has to go undercover and get close to Jurek in the hope of finding information about the remaining victim. Easy job, right? Not exactly. The trailer makes it pretty clear that Jurek knows he’s being played, and he seems perfectly happy to play along anyway. That’s usually when these things get really uncomfortable.
This is also where the Mindhunter comparison starts making a little more sense. The most disturbing scenes in that series weren’t always the violent ones. They were the conversations. Ed Kemper sitting calmly across from Holden Ford could be more unnerving than a chase sequence because of how casually he talked about things that should have been impossible to discuss so calmly. Nocturne appears to understand that same trick. Jurek doesn’t need to spend every scene threatening someone to feel dangerous. He has information the investigators desperately need, and that alone gives him a strange amount of power.
Stephen Graham Could Be the Wild Card
Stephen Graham might end up being the biggest reason this works. Playing Jurek Walter requires a certain kind of restraint. If he goes too far, the character becomes a generic TV psychopath. If he holds back too much, the whole thing loses its bite. Graham is usually very good at sitting somewhere in that uncomfortable middle. He can make someone look completely ordinary and then suddenly give you the feeling that there’s something very wrong underneath.
The trailer leans hard into that psychological back-and-forth. The investigators enter the room believing they’re the ones asking the questions, only for the balance of power to shift almost immediately. Jurek watches them, pokes at their weaknesses and seems to know exactly which buttons to press. Putting Beetz’s Saga across from him makes the whole thing even more dangerous because she’s not simply interrogating a suspect. She’s deliberately getting close to him. And when the person you’re trying to manipulate knows that’s exactly what you’re doing, well, good luck with that.
Why Nocturne Doesn’t Have to Be Another Mindhunter
The encouraging thing is that Nocturne doesn’t appear to be trying to copy Mindhunter scene for scene. Fincher’s series was a slow, methodical procedural about the beginnings of criminal profiling, while Nocturne looks much more personal. This is one particular case involving people with existing emotional connections, and those connections seem likely to make the investigation messier. The psychological similarities are there, but the actual story has its own shape.
There is some serious television experience behind the camera, too. John Hlavin serves as showrunner, while Rowan Joffé created the television adaptation, and Tim Van Patten directs the first two episodes. Van Patten has worked on The Sopranos, Boardwalk Empire and Black Mirror, which is a pretty interesting collection of credits for a series like this. The 10-episode first season is based on Lazarus and The Sandman, novels by Swedish writing duo Lars Kepler, the pen name of Alexandra Coelho Ahndoril and Alexander Ahndoril. Their books have sold around 20 million copies worldwide, so there is a fairly substantial crime-fiction history behind the show.
Of course, trailers lie. Well, maybe “lie” is a little harsh, but they certainly know how to make a show look better than it might actually be. Give any thriller enough ominous music, dim lighting and Stephen Graham staring silently at somebody, and suddenly you’re convinced you’ve found your next obsession. Still, Nocturne seems to be chasing the right kind of tension. The interesting part isn’t simply whether they can catch Jurek. It’s what happens to the people trying to catch him.
Schreiber’s Jonah has a lot to lose, Beetz’s Saga is being pushed dangerously close to the edge, and Graham’s Jurek seems more than happy to sit back and wait for one of them to slip. That’s a solid setup without even bringing Mindhunter into the conversation. If the full series can hold onto the uneasy atmosphere in this trailer, Apple may have something here. And honestly, after all those years of waiting for Mindhunter Season 3, crime-TV fans probably won’t complain about having another psychological rabbit hole to fall into.
Nocturne premieres globally on Apple TV on October 30, 2026, with its first two episodes arriving together. New episodes will then be released weekly on Fridays through December 25.
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