There were the post-doomsday bunkers of Silo, and before that Severance’s offices.
Why do so many Apple TV dramas go big on silently terrified cowed characters suffering through antiseptic corridors where the atmosphere is so oppressive it’s a wonder they can still breathe.
Could it be that’s what it’s like inside the titan of big tech that Steve Jobs built?
In its latest offering, the ten-part thriller Nocturne, Apple has once again confined the drama – at least initially – to claustrophobic clean-washed chambers: a high-security psychiatric hospital in Pennsylvania.
Never mind the staff: the real top dog here is Jurek Walter, a serial killer creepy enough to keep Hannibal Lecter awake at night – thanks to Stephen Graham’s transfixing laser-stare and almost wordless, scenery-chewing menace: call it “the silence of the hams”.
Such is his diabolical evil he talks a fellow inmate into taking his own life in the opening minutes.
But from there the story escapes into the outside world when a boy who has been missing for years is found stumbling out of the backwoods, barely alive and almost blind from years in a subterranean prison.
Yet his sister who was abducted with him is still missing – and it may be that Jurek Walter, despite his confinement, knows exactly where she is and why the brother has been released.
Lumbering in to take charge is our hero, retired cop Jonah Lynn (Liev Schreiber), complete with the full set of a) world-weary air b) disdain for the rules and c) tragic personal past without which no telly tec is now complete.
Time will tell but you wouldn’t bet against this broad-armed bear of a man being able to handle himself in the rough-and-tumble of a proper fight either.
Following the by now well-worn template for streaming-era police procedurals – think Mare of Easttown, Task – the story proceeds at a brooding, stately pace, the artistically gloomy visuals regularly punctuated by aerial drone shots of the spectacular Pennsylvania treescape.
Be warned: with the script based on not just one but two thrillers by Lars Kepler (pen name of Swedish husband and wife Alexander Ahndoril and Alexandra Coelho Ahndoril), there’s a confusing morass of plot knitting together any number of secondary storylines, not least Lynn’s undercover FBI goddaughter (Zazie Beetz).
The best thing is to overlook the occasional clunky exposition dump.
Also be sure to switch off your higher critical faculties and let go of the many plot holes unless you get a bigger kick out of arguing with the show than enjoying some richly absorbing entertainment that will have you slavering to know what happens next.
While there’s no doubt Graham’s performance is the attention-getter, this is Schreiber’s show (and not just because he’s executive producer).
An unsmiling force of stubborn determination and concealed emotion, his towering stature is the gravitational centre of the drama.
Graham’s serial killer appears to have the upper hand as the battle of wits gets under way, but thriller aficionados will be hooked to see who will prevail by the time this clash has gone the full distance.
Nocturne
Apple TV
To get more from Life, click here to sign up for our free Life newsletter.