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Metro
6 days ago
- Entertainment
- Metro
Matthew Goode insists Downton Abbey remark 'was not meant to be derogatory'
Matthew Goode caused a stir among Downtonians earlier this month when he said something that might be perceived as a slight on his beloved Downton Abbey character Henry Talbot. However, he has insisted that the comments he made were not intended 'in a horribly derogatory way'. The actor – who is currently starring in the new Netflix thriller Dept Q, out today – clarified his remarks in an exclusive interview with Metro. Goode recently confirmed he will not be returning for the third film of Julian Fellowes' Downton Abbey, having starred in the melodrama for two seasons. Speaking to Radio Times, he quipped that his character, racing driver Henry Talbot and Lady Mary's second husband, had become a 'wet lettuce', so it is probably for the best if he disappeared into the sunset. Wake up to find news on your TV shows in your inbox every morning with Metro's TV Newsletter. Sign up to our newsletter and then select your show in the link we'll send you so we can get TV news tailored to you. Addressing the wisecrack at Henry's expense, Goode told Metro: 'I didn't mean it in a horribly derogatory way. I just meant actually, wouldn't it be more exciting if [Lady Mary] didn't need a man so she might end up on her own? 'Some people look up to her as a modern feminist or a pillar of modern feminism.' While Goode never read the script for the third film, since he was working on the TV show The Offer, he suggested his own alternative ending for Lady Mary. 'I would hope that, if she does have a happy ending, maybe one of her earlier suitors could come back and whisk her off,' said the 47-year-old. He then suggested perhaps Lady Mary's ending could involve 'something surprising other than good old Henry'. So what does he think Henry is doing now? Replying without a beat: 'Drinking, probably.' To view this video please enable JavaScript, and consider upgrading to a web browser that supports HTML5 video While Goode is most familiar to his fans as a bastion of the period drama, with Downton, The Crown and Brideshead Revisited likely his most well-known roles, his latest IMDb entry is something wholly different. Goode stars as detective Carl Morck in Netflix's new cold case psychological thriller Dept Q, in which he has grown a grey-speckled beard and installed a chip on his shoulder to inhabit the frame of a tortured detective forever on the case. Based on the Danish crime novels by Jussi Adler-Olsen, Dept Q follows Goode's Mock as he joins forces with other down-and-out coppers in the Edinburgh precinct to try and crack long-unsolved cold cases. It turned out playing against type was something The Imitation Game star quite enjoyed, albeit admitting it did start to creep into his off-screen life during the 'seven-month grind' of filming the show in Scotland. His schedule included 4am wake-ups to run dialogue and prep for the day's scenes and weekends that were spent catching the Caledonian sleeper to visit his wife and children in Exeter, emerging bleary eyed at Euston Station at 5am. 'After seven months it does compound upon you slightly, playing someone with PTSD and working on the murder squad,' he said. 'But very nice problems to have.' He added: 'You get into a rhythm. The thing about doing long form television is that there isn't really any switching off, because it's a constant process.' When he wasn't running lines in the bath or filming the nine-episode show's high-octane scenes, he enjoyed moments to himself with a pot of coffee and a sports documentary – Ken Burn's Baseball being his favourite. More Trending Goode said all his roles have been challenging in certain ways, but did single out inhabiting the grizzled psyche of Morck as particularly demanding. 'The darkness of it was relentless. It's up there,' he said, momentarily wracking his brain. 'Once you finish, I just jettison everything from my memory banks. I control, alt, delete a lot.' He then added: 'But we're not saving lives. We're not in a war zone operating on children. It was tough, but let's keep it within the realms. It was a wonderful challenge.' View More » Dept Q is available to stream on Netflix from today. Got a story? If you've got a celebrity story, video or pictures get in touch with the entertainment team by emailing us celebtips@ calling 020 3615 2145 or by visiting our Submit Stuff page – we'd love to hear from you. MORE: WWE champion Lyra Valkyria reveals star's horror injury was 'worst she's ever seen' MORE: Don't expect another Lindsay Lohan rom-com on Netflix this Christmas MORE: Iconic Netflix show will have even more 'horror' when season 2 finally drops
Time Magazine
6 days ago
- Entertainment
- Time Magazine
Netflix's Dept. Q Is One Character Short of a Great Detective Show
Dept. Q, a Netflix crime drama from The Queen's Gambit writer-director Scott Frank, presents itself as a show about difficult people. Its antihero, Edinburgh police detective Carl Morck, has just come back to work after being shot in the line of duty—while berating a young cop who was killed before Carl, distracted by anger, had a chance to finish his rant. Body cam footage of the shooting, along with an already-irascible reputation, ensures his return is anything but triumphant. The premiere also introduces Merritt Lingard, a prickly prosecutor whose hostile cross-examination of a man she's sure murdered his wife infuriates her colleagues. 'You go too far,' Merritt's boss warns her. Carl's superiors feel similarly about his aggressive approach. There's great potential in the entwining of these 'good guys' with bad personalities whose obsessive pursuit of justice has left them isolated and embittered. If only the show's many plot twists didn't limit its parallel accounts of abrasive crusaders navigating a flawed criminal justice system by limiting viewers' perspective on Merritt (Chloe Pirrie). Frank, adapting a series of novels by Danish author Jussi Adler-Olsen, is ultimately more invested in Carl's side of the story. What is, in one sense, a disappointing choice does have the benefit of setting up a detective series that has the potential to run for many seasons without getting old, thanks to characters and performances much richer than we normally see in this overcrowded genre. As portrayed by the wonderful Matthew Goode—a charming period-drama stalwart who made impressions as The Crown 's Lord Snowdon, Downton Abbey 's Henry Talbot, and The Offer 's Robert Evans —Carl, an Englishman who complains incessantly about his adoptive home of Scotland, is as fascinating in his transparently self-protective arrogance as he is frustrating. 'The phrase superiority complex seems to be the overall theme of your personnel file,' notes Dr. Irving (a wry Kelly Macdonald), the therapist he's required to see as a condition of his return to work. He replies that he's less impressed with himself than he is unimpressed by other people. It gradually becomes apparent that this attitude is his way of suppressing his guilt over not just his inferior's death, but also the grave injury suffered by still-hospitalized partner, DCI James Hardy (Jamie Sives), in an incident for which everyone around Carl seems to blame him. A more formulaic detective show would send him on a rogue mission to apprehend the mysterious assailant who shot all three cops, shortly after they arrived on the scene of a wellness check that yielded the discovery of a body. Yet Frank, who wrote or co-wrote all nine episodes and directed six, makes the intriguing decision to keep that case mostly in the background. The season focuses, instead, on Carl's new assignment to establish Department Q—a cold-case division funded by law-enforcement leaders bent on generating positive press by creating fodder for true crime podcasts. This role is hardly an honor. Carl's supervisor, Moira (Kate Dickie), a woman with a perma-grimace who despises him, resents being forced to reopen old cases when she urgently needs resources for active ones. So she gives Carl a box of yellowing files to choose from, banishes him to a murky sub-basement that used to be the building's shower room, and uses his budget to buy everyone else new computers. Though Moira is none too eager to give him the help he needs, Hardy has nothing better to do while convalescing than scrutinize evidence, and Dept. Q eventually cobbles together a small staff. Detective Constable Rose Dickson (Leah Byrne) has been confined to her desk since a car accident shattered her nerves. Unpleasant as it can be, working with Carl gives the young officer a chance to get back in the field, where her warmth and people skills win over essential allies he alienates. Recruited from IT, Syrian refugee Akram Salim (Alexej Manvelov), who claims to have relevant experience from his home country, has been bugging Moira to put him on the force. Like Carl, Akram crosses lines, though his transgressions are fueled by expediency rather than temper. 'Back home, were you working for the good guys or the bad guys?' Carl asks him. 'When you know which is which,' Akram replies, 'please tell me.' This sense of moral uncertainty—of how we should feel about detectives who do bad things in service of good outcomes, of whether the blame for their behavior lies with institutions that rarely work well without manipulation—pervades the series. No easy answers are provided, as the missing-person case Dept. Q takes on complexifies. This is, in large part, a refreshing break from the didactic tone of so many crime shows, although Frank does leave some compelling ideas insufficiently examined. He seems much more concerned with introducing relationships and storylines that could potentially fuel subsequent seasons by developing each character (Merritt aside) in tandem with the central mystery. (His coyness about major aspects of Carl's personal life does feel a bit gratuitous.) Though they're very different people, Carl, Rose, Akram, Hardy, and even Moira have all been scarred by jobs that force them to absorb endless trauma. 'I'm two people,' Carl reflects, in a rare moment of vulnerability: one who is immersed in humanity's most terrifying impulses and another who's struggling to project normalcy. 'I have to be that way.' It's an effective choice, on Frank's part, to lean into its protagonist's cognitive dissonance instead of trying too hard to maintain a uniform mood. If the unhinged nature of the criminals they're closing in on clashes, tonally, with the groundedness of Carl and his colleagues' interactions while working on the case, that only makes the show more effective on a psychological level. By inhabiting the interiority of detectives who live in our mundane world but have to keep their heads in a scarier one that's equally real, Dept. Q expands beyond typical crime fare in much the same way The Queen's Gambit transcended its ostensible subjects: chess, midcentury fashion, female empowerment. The first season does lack the latter show's depth. But what it accomplishes should be enough to make it very popular. In that case, it stands a chance of becoming one of TV's best long-running procedurals, with as many opportunities to go deeper as there are files on Carl's desk.
Edinburgh Live
20-05-2025
- Entertainment
- Edinburgh Live
ITV Downton Abbey star confirms they won't return for third and final film
Our community members are treated to special offers, promotions and adverts from us and our partners. You can check out at any time. More info The last instalment of the Downton Abbey movie trilogy, The Grand Finale, is poised to grace cinemas later this year, offering a sumptuous goodbye to fans of the cherished period drama. Hugh Bonneville, portraying the esteemed Lord Grantham, has remarked that the upcoming film will be a 'great sign-off' for devotees, further stoking the fires of excitement for another splendid outing with their favourite characters. Unfortunately, Matthew Goode will not reprise his role as Henry Talbot in the closing film. Though he featured in the 2019 film, the actor cited conflicting professional commitments and health problems for his absence from future sequels. In an interview with Radio Times, the 47-year-old actor detailed: "I was unavailable for the second because I was doing The Offer. Then, for the third, I was shooting this (Dept Q)," reports Devon Live. He also mentioned suffering a knee injury requiring surgery, noting: "But I also buggered my knee, and I had to have an operation. That takes weeks to get over, so I was never going to be able to do it. And let's face it, he was edging towards becoming a bit of a wet lettuce. So maybe it's a good thing." While his character won't receive a final curtain call, the forthcoming film promises a host of familiar faces; Belfast Live reports that Elizabeth McGovern, Michelle Dockery, Laura Carmichael, and Jim Carter are all set to return to their iconic roles. The closing chapter of the series promises to be a glittering affair with Phyllis Logan, Robert James-Collier, Joanne Froggatt, Dominic West, and Sophie McShera joining for The Grand Finale. In an April appearance on The One Show, actress Joanne Froggatt, beloved for her role in the celebrated series, opened up about the final instalment of the franchise. Acknowledging the bittersweet end, Froggatt conveyed her emotions: "Oh my goodness, it's going to be hard! We've said goodbye a few times, thinking, 'This is the end', at the end of the seasons." She recounted the journey: "Then we did one movie and we wondered if we'd get a second movie." Froggatt then firmly established: "This really is, the third and final, so this really is goodbye. It's going to be emotional, but all good things must come to an end, I suppose." During the conversation, Froggatt also let slip a fascinating detail about her character Anna, elaborating: "There's been pictures out there, so that's one spoiler.I wrote my own storyline there!" hinting at how her real-life pregnancy was incorporated into the filming timeline.
