‘Dept Q' review: Gripping Netflix mystery is the stuff of sweat-drenched nightmares

Irish Independent

a day ago

It's a shallow, lazy comparison, seemingly based on nothing more than the fact that both series feature a spiky, disagreeable lead character with a habit of getting on people's wick, in charge of a group of rejects and screw-ups.
It also does a great disservice to The Queen's Gambit creator Scott Frank's excellent series, which transplants Jussi Henry Adler-Olsen's Denmark-set book series to Edinburgh.
The switch works a treat. The granite and gothic streets of the Scottish capital are the perfect setting for a dense, gripping mystery that plumbs dark and disturbing depths.
Matthew Goode is terrific as DI Carl Morck, a brilliant detective who's loathed by most of his colleagues for his arrogance, abrasiveness, sarcasm and sense of superiority. Being a sassenach among the Scots doesn't help matters.
Morck takes a steep fall from grace after his carelessness results in the death of a rookie officer in a shooting incident that also leaves his own partner, DS Hardy (Jamie Sives), partially paralysed.
Morck himself takes a bullet in the neck. He's emotionally scarred and suffering from PTSD, though bottling it all up.
He's given a cavernous office in the basement – a former toilet where the urinals still stand
When he returns to work, unwelcomed and unwanted by his resentful colleagues, he's mandated to have counselling sessions with police therapist Dr Rachel Irving (the great and seemingly ageless Kelly Macdonald).
Morck's boss Moira (Kate Dickie) tells him a budget has been made available to set up a new cold case unit, the titular Department Q, and he is to be its leader.
He's given a cavernous office in the basement – a former toilet where the urinals still stand – an ancient car, a single laptop, a mountain of unsolved case files, and no resources or staff. It's a department of one.
Morck knows it's a cynical PR exercise to deflect attention away from low case-clearance rates and that the money will be spent on other departments. Gradually, however, he begins to warm to the job and assembles a small team of fellow misfits.
Akram Salim (Alexej Manvelov) is a Syrian immigrant who was a policeman back home, but is now reduced to doing casual menial work around the office.
Initially dumped on Morck to get him out of the way, Akram, who's deceptively mild-mannered, turns out to be an ace detective with a tough streak who's every bit the equal of his new boss.
Rose (Leah Byrne), a cadet who was sidelined into tedious filing work after a breakdown, badgers her way on to the team, eager to prove herself. Morck also draws on the experience of Hardy, who analyses cases from his hospital bed.
Elsewhere, a ruthlessly ambitious state prosecutor called Merritt Lingard (Chloe Pirrie), whose preening overconfidence in court allows a wife-murderer to walk free, disappears while on a ferry with her mentally disabled brother William (Tom Bulpett).
At first, all this appears to be happening at the same time, until an ingenious twist near the end of the slow-burn first episode reveals Merritt has been missing for four years and hers is the case Morck and his team have chosen.
We learn that Merritt was abducted and is being held captive by a mysterious older couple who taunt, torment and torture her 24/7.
The location of her captivity, I can't reveal, but the setting, a marvel of disturbing set design, is the stuff of sweat-drenched nightmares.
In fact, to give away too much of what happens over the course of the nine episodes would be to spoil a complex, riveting thriller in which character development is as important as suspense.
The excellent cast features Scottish stalwarts Shirley Henderson and Mark Bonnar.