It opens with a bang. Three police officers shot in what appears to be a surprise ambush at the scene of a grisly murder. One is killed, another left paralyzed. The third makes it out easy – shot in the face with no major bones or arteries hit.
DCI Carl Morck (Matthew Goode) survives the attack, but he’s left even more curmudgeonly than before. The trauma sticks with him, no matter how badly he wants to pretend nothing’s wrong. His partner, James Hardy (Jaime Sives) is recovering in the hospital, and Morck returns to the Edinburgh police force with nothing to do other than stew over the lack of progress in his case and deride the work of his colleagues.
His boss, Detective Chief Superintendent Moira Jacobsen (Kate Dickie) is told by her superiors that they would like her to open a new cold cases department in order to tackle high-profile, feel-good cases that create good publicity for the department, and she sees this as an opportunity to confine Morck to the basement and offers him the job.
And so Department Q is formed, in a shabby basement that was once, long ago, a shower and bathroom floor. Some spoilers follow, though obviously I won’t reveal major details of the mystery.
Dept. Q takes place in Edinburgh and the surrounding area, as well as the fictional Scottish island of Mhòr (reached via ferry by way of the very real town of Oban). I just spent two weeks in Scotland and while much of the show was not actually filmed in Edinburgh, I did notice some scenes that were very obviously shot there, including one outside Greyfriars Bobby’s Bar, with its famous Skye terrier statue out front. I ate lunch there one day on my travels, and my hotel was just a couple blocks away. I also spent a couple nights in Oban.
Suffice to say, I was immediately intrigued by Dept Q when I first learned it was coming out during my Scottish adventure. The show is based on the Scandinavian noir books by author Jussi Adler-Olsen, though the story has been moved from Denmark to Scotland and thus qualifies as “tartan noir”. It was adapted for the screen by The Queen’s Gambit creator Scott Frank, who not only wrote but also directed most of the episodes.
When Morck takes over the new department, he’s given almost none of the resources promised to the department and has to beg and scrape for any kind of assistance. This comes in the form of Akram Salim (Alexej Manvelov) a Syrian expatriate with a mysterious past that involved finding people who didn’t want to be found. Akram is the polar opposite of Morck. Where Morck runs hot and is quick to anger, Akram is soft-spoken and courteous. He’s also quite clearly the most dangerous man in the entire series.
They’re eventually joined by DC Rose Dickson (Leah Byrne) who is tired of being confined to a desk after a personal meltdown two years prior and begs Morck for a spot on the cold cases team.
Morck is given dozens of files to choose from, but it’s Akram who chooses the case: A young prosecutor went missing four years earlier and was never found. No body was ever discovered and the case went cold. As a prosecutor, the woman – Merritt Lingard (Chloe Pirrie) – had plenty of enemies, and the suspect list leads Morck and his colleagues down a twisty, turny investigation that leads to evidence of corruption, conspiracy and organized crime.
Interspersed throughout the nine-episode series (which is three episodes longer than I expected from a mystery coming out of the UK) are various flashbacks to Lingard’s past, though these are far less frequent than in other cold cases series like Unforgotten or Black Snow, which is a good thing. Both those shows get too bogged down in past storylines. Most of the show takes place in the modern timeline as the detectives track down leads, interview possible witnesses and suspects, and deal with personal challenges.
Where the show struggles most is juggling some of these storylines. There’s a “mandated police therapy” subplot that feels weirdly out of place. Kelly Macdonald plays Dr. Rachel Irving and as much as I like Macdonald, Irving and Morck’s chemistry feels off. I’m also a bit tired of the “reluctant cop goes to therapy” trope. There is also Morck’s relationship with his stepson which takes up a bit too much screentime, though at least also leads to Morck’s most humanizing moments and some genuine character growth.
The nine episode run is probably too long, and Dept. Q could have benefited from tightening up the pacing and bringing us some closure a little earlier on. I genuinely enjoyed the entire thing – I watched it all in one sitting! – but I’d largely figured out the mystery much earlier (it’s not a huge secret since we see Lingard in captivity and there are plenty of clues as to who her captors are) and one of the big twists at the end would have worked better if it had all come a little sooner.
Nevertheless, despite feeling a little bloated compared to tighter UK series like Slow Horses or Happy Valley, this was still an incredibly entertaining mystery with a wonderful cast. Matthew Goode is phenomenal as the acerbic DCI Morck, but so is every other actor on the series. The dour, grey mood of the show is lightened by plenty of moments of humor. And while there’s not a ton of action, this only makes the bursts of violence that much more shocking and intense.
If you’re a fan of cold cases mysteries like Unforgotten, Scottish mysteries like Shetland or crime shows in general, please do yourself a favor and check out Dept Q on Netflix as soon as possible. I rarely watch an entire show in one sitting (and granted, I only set out to watch six episodes and was surprised by the extra three) but the mere fact that I did should tell you how much I enjoyed this one – either that, or how tired and lazy I felt as I recovered from jetlag from my own journey through Scotland.
Hopefully this is a smash hit and more of Adler-Olsen’s books are adapted for Netflix. Certainly the season ends with an eye to the future, and I for one would love to join Morck and Akram and Rose and Hardy and all the rest on another case. Only maybe next time we could get some of the Scottish highlands as well.
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