'Dept. Q' review: A dazzling display of decidedly dark material

The Star

13-06-2025

When people go through life habitually inflicting verbal, mental, or emotional (and occasionally physical) blunt force trauma on others, it's tough to get a handle on them, let alone begin to like them.Ironically, while we quickly write off such types in our personal spheres without considering their "backstory" (and sometimes suffer that fate ourselves), fictional characters have an easier go of things in our estimation as readers or viewers.
This is very much the case with detective Carl Morck (Matthew Goode, The Good Wife, Watchmen's Ozymandias and Abigail's absentee dad), the fractured soul who is front and centre of the new, bingeable noir mystery Dept. Q.
Goode's knack for instantly connecting us with Morck's haunted interior – among others, he affects a particularly hollow gaze and vulnerable posture while walking around with a palpable defensive wall of irascibility as his exterior – helps put the viewer quickly at ease with the investigator, regardless of how every other character reacts to or behaves around him.
Plus, Morck's sharp as a tack, that one. Sometimes, as cutting as a razor, or bruising as a truncheon, depending on the mood you catch him in.
'So tell us, Mr, uh, Peacemaker, why should we let you join the Justice Gang? Oh wait, you're not here auditioning for the DCU?'
Based on the Danish novels by Jussi Adler-Olsen (10 so far, all in the process of getting movie adaptations back home), Dept. Q transplants the setting to Edinburgh, Scotland, where Morck himself is a fish out of water.
The series is the third Netflix production for showrunner Scott Frank after Godless and The Queen's Gambit, this time in collaboration with screenwriter/playwright Chandni Lakhani, a former script editor on Black Mirror. It's a winner right out of the starting gate.
The very English (in this version, at least) Morck, still fixated on the 1966 World Cup win, finds himself thrust into a makeshift department handling cold cases after the startling opener of this nine-episode series.
A neat narrative trick introduces us to his first case, and there are so many delights – large and small, including how "Department Q" gets its name – to be found throughout that I will do my best to steer clear of anything that might give these away.
It's also intriguing to see how his motley crew comes together, from Syrian asylum seeker Akram (Alexej Manvelov, Jack Ryan Season Three's Russian defence minister) to PTSD sufferer Rose (a luminous Leah Byrne) to Morck's long-suffering (and currently struggling) partner James Hardy (Jamie Sives, Ned Stark's ill-fated captain of the guard from Game Of Thrones).
'So, detective, is that a tennis ball in your hand, or are you just stressed to see me?'
They're not just passengers on Morck's mopey train, either, with each contributing immensely to the investigation.
Yes, singular. Dept. Q has its investigators looking into one case for the duration, and while this sounds like it could bog things down or veer off course along the way, rest assured that it doesn't.
There are moments when feelings of being gaslit/catfished cross over from the screen to the viewer, but it (sort of) works out in service of understanding and unravelling the central mystery.
The acting ensemble is flat-out brilliant, including Kate Dickie (GOT's Lysa Arryn of the Eyrie) as Morck's fed-up but opportunistic supervisor Moira, Kelly McDonald (Giri/Haji, No Country For Old Men) as his fed-up and perplexed therapist Dr Rachel Irving, Chloe Pirrie (the mother-in-flashback from Queen's Gambit) as ambitious prosecutor Merritt Lingard, and Stephen Burns (Mark Bonnar, The Rig S1) as her pompous boss Lord Advocate Stephen Burns.
It doesn't matter what each character's station in life may be, since Morck treats everyone with a mixture of barely-there tolerance and ever-present disdain, though sometimes his actual regard for them (ranging from grudging respect to, horrors, affection) slips through.
It should be a crime to have this much fun watching something with such a grim premise. But yes, the series offers loads of it, neatly woven into the decidedly dark twists and turns of the story.
Credit to Clark and Lakhani for deftly balancing the grim with the grins, giving us unexpected LOL moments amid the sombreness and occasional burst of violence.
Goes to show that, just as the show's promotional material declares, "not all causes are lost", the same goes for its characters, some of whom do manage to hang around till the end. Bring on the rest of it!
All nine episodes of Dept. Q are available to stream on Netflix.