Explosive plot twists make this noirish cold case thriller sizzle: CHRISTOPHER STEVENS reviews last night's TV
Dept Q (Netflix)
Are you a fan of Gary Oldman in Slow Horses? You'll like Dept Q. Love the cold cases on Unforgotten? Give Dept Q a try. Enjoy Rebus? You'll be at home with Dept Q.
There's not too much that's original about Netflix 's noirish new crime serial, starring Matthew Goode as a disillusioned detective in Edinburgh. DCI Carl Morck is brilliant but embittered and supercilious, a man with no friends left in the force after a botched investigation leaves a young PC dead and a senior colleague paralysed in hospital.
Kelly MacDonald plays his bored shrink, so fed up of listening to middle-aged coppers talk (or refuse to talk) about their traumas that she eats her lunch and barely pretends to engage during their therapy sessions.
Morck's boss (Kate Dickie) can't stand the sight of him. Losing patience with his insolence, she snaps, 'Do you ever stop and wonder why people hate you?'
In a parallel storyline, the superb Chloe Pirrie plays a young barrister, Merritt Lingard, trying to keep her career alive while caring for her autistic brother, William (Tom Bulpett). She's also fending off a stalker who leaves threatening voicemail messages.
When she tosses her phone into the sea, William gleefully throws his hat away too — then has a meltdown when he discovers he can't get it back. People stare in disapproval, and no one comes to Merritt's aid, even when William lashes out. It's a well-observed glimpse of the impossible challenges faced by families struggling to cope with adults who have non-verbal autism.
All this bleakness is streaked with vivid slashes of humour. Morck shares his apartment with his teenage son and a lodger, who exist in a state of wordless warfare — one blasting out heavy metal, the other turning operatic arias up to maximum volume.
The mixture of policework, existential despair and mordant comedy, as well as the Nordic names, betrays the source of the story.
Danish novelist Jussi Adler-Olsen has sold more than 10 million copies of his Dept Q stories.
This one is based on The Keeper Of Lost Causes, which was published in 2007.
The 'lost causes' are the cases that police have shelved as unsolvable.
When the Cabinet Office orders a few of the files must be reopened — because arrests over long-ago crimes make good headlines — Morck is put in charge, with a Syrian refugee called Akram (Alexej Manvelov) as his assistant.
This gives his chief an excuse to banish him to an 'operations room' in the basement... with tiles on the floor and urinals on the wall.
There's another echo of a classic police drama that anyone who watched The Wire will recognise.
Despite all these well-worn elements, what makes Dept Q stand out is its explosive plot twists. There's one in the opening scene and they continue to detonate, upending expectations.
The reveal that ties Merritt and William to Morck, which comes at the end of episode one, is devastating. No spoilers here.
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