SLOUGH, ENGLAND: Netflix’s new crime thriller Dept. Q offers everything fans of bleak, brooding detectives could hope for—rage, trauma, blood-soaked clues, and a pitch-black basement office.
Anchored by Matthew Goode’s compelling portrayal of Carl Morck, the series is a slow-burning noir that revels in its grime, grit, and grim humour.
Based on Jussi Adler-Olsen’s bestselling Danish crime novel The Keeper of Lost Causes, the show relocates the action to a perpetually grey Edinburgh. But it’s not just the weather that’s dark—Dept. Q plunges headfirst into unresolved crimes, institutional failure, and mental unraveling.
Carl Morck: Damaged, Brilliant, and Disastrously Rude
Carl Morck is a textbook anti-hero: abrasive, traumatized, and convinced of his own intellectual superiority. Matthew Goode—best known for Chasing Liberty, The Crown, and Ordeal by Innocence—leans into the role with chilly finesse. His Morck doesn’t invite sympathy, but rather earns it grudgingly as he battles PTSD, office politics, and the ghosts of cases past.
Banished to the basement (literally) by exasperated boss Moira (Kate Dickie), Carl is assigned to a cold-case division nobody expects to succeed. His team? A mismatched trio including:
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Akram (Alexej Manvelov), a Syrian Muslim IT specialist whose prayer scenes are well-intentioned but theologically questionable;
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Rose, a rookie desperate for more than clerical work.
The dysfunctional squad’s mission: solve a mountain of abandoned cases while navigating Carl’s contempt for basic human interaction.
A Second Plotline, A Second Trainwreck
Running parallel is the story of Merritt Lingard (Chloe Pirrie), a prosecutor battling both a fragile legal case and a menacing stalker. Burdened with a disabled brother and a regrettable haircut, she’s introduced as a walking stress fracture—one viewers are unfairly slow to root for. But as the threads of Merritt’s and Carl’s lives converge, so does the audience’s empathy.
Blood, Banter, and a Basement Full of Baggage
The show thrives on its contrasting tones: flashes of dark humour cut through the gloom, while violence is visceral yet sparing. Bullets fly, fists land, and yet a quiet dignity hums beneath the carnage. And though the gore is tempered by lilting Scottish accents—thank you, subtitles—some scenes still land with gut-punch intensity.
Flawed But Forgivable
Does Dept. Q stumble? Absolutely. From questionable religious representation to fringe-induced character bias (Merritt’s haircut might as well be a plot device), the show isn’t immune to critique. But in a genre flooded with procedural copycats and emotionally hollow leads, Dept. Q earns points for character depth, thematic darkness, and Matthew Goode’s glacial stare.
Unanswered questions linger as the finale fades to black—but that only whets the appetite for a second season. If Netflix plays its cards right, Dept. Q may just become its next slow-burn sleeper hit.
