Zazie Beetz Goes Undercover With a Serial Killer in the First ‘Nocturne’ Trailer

On Tuesday, Apple TV+ premiered the trailer and key art for Nocturne, a crime drama about the showdown between Liev Schreiber’s homicide detective and Stephen Graham’s brilliant serial killer.

The TV drama, based on Lars Kepler’s critically acclaimed international best-selling crime thriller The Sandman, will premiere on Friday, October 30, and run through December 25 with 10 episodes, airing new episodes each Friday.

The story follows Jonah Lynn (Schreiber), a former soldier who became a homicide detective after moving from the harsh streets of Philadelphia to a quiet life in a small town in western Pennsylvania. His quiet life shatters when Jurek Walter (Graham) attacks both the town and his family. The hunt for the last missing person by Jonas forces him to send his surrogate daughter, FBI agent Saga Bauer (Zazie Beetz), against the killer, which forces Jonas to think about how much he is willing to do.

The trailer starts with a police briefing in which an officer tells the team their department has been working with the FBI to find missing people. But then he says they have their first lead.

Then comes the time of Graham’s character, Jurek Walter, who is a killer and considered dead. “Jurek Walter has been locked in the basement of the Riverside Psychiatric Hospital under six feet of concrete,” the agent is informed. “But people are disappearing again. Just like before.”

From then on, viewers follow Saga as she goes undercover to question Jurek, but she becomes a victim of his tricks.

Other cast members are Bill Camp, Rory Culkin, Chrissy Metz, Poorna Jagannathan, and Gary Carr.

Schreiber is an award-winning actor who has appeared in many TV shows and movies and became famous for the TV series “Ray Donovan.” He is also an executive producer. Zazie Beetz, an Emmy nominee for Atlanta, produces the series through her production company, “Sleepy Poppy Productions.” Stephen Graham, an award-winning actor, was praised for his Netflix series “Adolescence.”

Apple moved the story from the original Swedish novel to Pennsylvania. In the novel, the protagonist is Stockholm detective Joona Linna, but the series has renamed the character “Jonah Lynn” while keeping “Saga Bauer” and “Jurek Walter” the same.

Nocturne has been in development for more than three years. Apple revealed this series under the title “Lazarus” in February 2023, when it was the name of a later novel in the series. Then, in May 2025, when Apple gave the series the green light, Schreiber became its lead, replacing Tom Hardy, who was playing Jurek at the time. Graham was chosen as the killer, and filming took place in western Pennsylvania; some scenes were shot in New Kensington in November 2025 under the working title “Parallax.”

Rowan Joffe, a BAFTA-winning writer, has created this series. Along with him, John Hlavin also serves as the showrunner and developed it for television. Tim Van Patten, who has won multiple Emmy, Peabody, and DGA Awards, directed the first two episodes.

A+E Studios has produced this series for Apple TV+ in association with Range Studios. Alexandra Coelho Ahndoril and Alexander Ahndoril, the writers behind Lars Kepler pseudonym, are the executive producers, along with Øystein Karlsen, David Rysdahl, Dorothy Fortenberry, and Niclas Salomonsson. Two award winners, Barry Jossen and Tana Jamieson, act as the executive producers for A+E Studios. Heather Kadin, Peter Micelli, and Jack Whigham are also executive producers for Range Studios.

Lars Kepler is a pen name of a Swedish husband-wife team who have written 10 novels featuring Joona Linna. Their books have been translated into 40 languages and are available in more than 170 territories.

“The Sandman,” the fourth Joona Linna novel, was first published in Sweden in 2012 as “Sandmannen.” The story revolves around a man who, after many years of being declared dead, appears near the Stockholm railway bridge, bringing back the old case of Jonas against the killer Jurek Walter, whom Jonas had arrested earlier. The novel topped the charts at No. 1 in nine countries and sold more copies than any other crime novel in Sweden that year, according to the authors’ literary agency. Lee Child, a thriller writer, has described it as “meeting Hannibal Lecter all over again.”