'Nocturne' Showrunner Explains Why Series Swapped Sweden for Pennsylvania

Adapting Lars Kepler s books into the Nocturne series required a significant change: transporting a story originally set in Sweden to the United States. The choice of Pennsylvania, however, was no accident. In an exclusive interview with Omelete, co-writer and showrunner John Hlavin explained how the region helped preserve the atmosphere of so-called Scandinavian noir.

According to Hlavin, the challenge was to find a setting that had characteristics similar to Swedish landscapes, but without simply reproducing the original environment.

The screenwriter explained that Rowan Joffé, responsible for the adaptation, is British and spent some time in Los Angeles, but didn't live in the United States for very long. Hlavin, on the other hand, was born in Ohio and was more familiar with the characteristics of rural American regions.

“Pennsylvania has a huge expanse of forests. And the way the light filters through the trees, especially in the fall when the sun is in a different position in the sky, reminded me a lot of Scandinavian noir,” he explained.

Another important aspect was the behavior of the residents of the rural communities: “These are places where people live further apart from each other and are more reserved. They are not rude, they just prefer to keep to themselves,” he stated.

The combination of these characteristics helped the team find a setting that maintained the natural beauty while also capturing the sense of isolation and threat present in the original work.

“We were also looking for a place that seemed idyllic at first glance, but that, when you looked beneath the surface, would reveal much more frightening things,” Hlavin said.

The showrunner explained that the intention was not simply to find an American region that could pass for Sweden.

“How do you tell a Swedish story in the United States without it seeming like you’re trying to recreate Sweden? How do you do it in an authentic and original way, but also in a way that refers back to the source material? That’s how we got to this point,” he concluded.

Everything about Night

The series follows the story of Jonah Lynn (Schreiber), a former soldier turned homicide detective. Tired of the violent routine on the streets of Philadelphia, he moves to a quiet town in Western Pennsylvania seeking tranquility. However, when the town and his own family become targets of the terribly cunning serial killer Jurek Walter (Graham), Jonah must fight to protect everyone he loves. The desperate search for Jurek's last missing victim forces Jonah to put his adopted daughter, FBI agent Saga Bauer (Beetz), on Jurek's trail. What will Jonah's limits be?

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The production adapts the novels Lazarus and Sandman, by Lars Kepler (literary pseudonym of the Swedish couple Alexandra Coelho Ahndoril and Alexander Ahndoril), one of the world's best-selling suspense authors, whose books have been translated into 40 languages ​​and distributed in more than 170 territories.

Nocturne premiered on October 30th on Apple TV , with two episodes out of a total of 10, which will air until December 25th.