Adolescence Creator Confirms Connection Between Netflix and Apple Shows

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, Stephen Graham returns for another crime-focused thriller in Apple TV’s Nocturne. Instead of playing the guilt-ridden father role he did in Adolescence, Stephen 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, Stephen Graham reaffirmed in an interview with Polygon that fans of Adolescence may want to watch Nocturne next because 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 Stephen 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 as a small town in the television series. This matches 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 face frequent harassment, and his sister struggles to make real connections.

Stephen Graham explained that the thematic parallel involves examining the impact of a horrific event on a family, specifically within the context of Jonah and Saga. Both Jonah (Liev Schreiber) and Saga (Zazie Beetz) connect to Stephen Graham’s character, Jurek, whose crimes help shape who they are when audiences first meet them in the opening episodes of the series.

Nocturne and Adolescence also share a psychological aspect that, according to Stephen Graham, makes them very similar.

Stephen Graham shared that the human aspect involves wanting to know what makes people tick, noting that the context of humanity relates to trying to understand why people do things and trying to learn from those mistakes.

Audiences can now stream the first two episodes of Nocturne on Apple TV. New episodes will release every Friday through December 25, 2026.

Source: Polygon