'Adolescence' Creator Officially Confirms a Connection Between His Netflix and Apple Shows
A serial crime motif binds small town grief to online radicalization
Co-created by Stephen Graham and Jack Thorne, the 2025 British limited series Adolescence made waves worldwide when it debuted on Netflix. Adolescence explores the immediate fallout from a young boy, Jamie (Owen Cooper), stabbing a girl to death and the radicalization of men online. The series was so well received that a UK government–backed initiative made it free to watch in high schools.
A year later, Graham returns for yet another crime-focused thriller — Apple TV’s Nocturne. Instead of playing the guilt-ridden father role he did in Adolescence, however, Graham steps into the soft-soled shoes of Jurek Walter, the cunning mastermind behind the disappearance of two young children — the Frost siblings.
Ed. note: This interview contains light spoilers for the first two episodes of Nocturne.
Despite depicting two very different crimes, Graham reaffirmed in an interview with Polygon that fans of Adolescence may want to watch Nocturne next— more connects the two stories than meets the eye.
What connects Nocturne and Adolescence?
At a press junket for Apple TV's Nocturne, Polygon asked Graham whether people who loved Adolescence could find something to love in Nocturne.
One of the main themes of Lars Kepler’s novel "The Sandman", on which Nocturne is based, is how Jurek Walter’s crimes affect not only his victims but also their families and friends in Stockholm (renamed Fairhaven, a small town, in the TV series). This isn’t too far off from how Adolescence, while focusing heavily on online radicalization, also delves deep into the impact the stabbing has on the community and on Jamie's family. For example, Jamie’s parents are often harassed, and his sister struggles to make real connections.
“That’s an interesting parallel. I think there’s a lot in there thematically that matches with Adolescence. It is that kind of impact of what a horrific thing can have on a family, specifically if you look at it in the context of Jonah and Saga,” Graham explained. Both Jonah (Liev Schreiber) and Saga (Zazie Beetz) are connected to Graham’s character, Jurek, whose crimes help shape who they are when audiences first meet them in the series' opening episodes.
However, Nocturne and Adolescence also share a psychological aspect that, according to Graham, makes them very similar.
“I think it comes down to that kind of aspect of humanity where we want to know what it is that makes people tick,” Graham shared. “Isn’t the context of humanity, trying to have an understanding for why people do things and trying to learn from those mistakes?”
Audiences can now see just how similar Nocturne and Adolescence are: the first two episodes of Nocturne are available to stream on Apple TV. New episodes will be released every Friday, through and including December 25, 2026.