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Although the Department Q novels are set in Copenhagen, showrunner Scott Frank transplanted the entire story to Edinburgh, filming across Scotland and letting the wintry, atmospheric city function almost as a character in its own right. The relocation gives the familiar Nordic-noir formula a fresh Scottish accent while keeping its chilly, melancholy soul.
The series is based on Jussi Adler-Olsen's hugely popular novels, which began with The Keeper of Lost Causes and had already been adapted into a run of Danish-language films. This marks the first English-language television version of the material, reintroducing the cold-case unit to a global streaming audience.
Matthew Goode's turn as the caustic, deeply unlikeable Carl Morck is a sharp departure from the charming, refined characters he is best known for playing. The role's abrasiveness became a talking point among viewers and critics, and Netflix moved quickly to renew the show for a second season on the strength of its reception.
Dept. Q is a Netflix crime drama created by Scott Frank, the writer-director behind The Queen's Gambit and Godless, adapting the best-selling Department Q novels by Danish author Jussi Adler-Olsen. In a canny twist on the Nordic-noir source material, Frank relocates the action from Copenhagen to a wintry, gothic Edinburgh, using the Scottish city's shadowed closes and grey stone as an atmospheric backdrop for a story about buried guilt and colder cases. The result is a prestige procedural with literary polish and a distinctly bleak sense of humor.
Matthew Goode stars as DCI Carl Morck, a brilliant but abrasive detective whose arrogance has alienated nearly everyone around him. After a shooting leaves one colleague dead and another paralyzed, a guilt-ridden and unwanted Morck is exiled to the basement to run Department Q, a newly created cold-case unit that is really a public-relations gesture. There, with an unlikely team including the enigmatic Akram (Alexej Manvelov), he reopens the disappearance of prosecutor Merritt Lingard (Chloe Pirrie), a case everyone else has given up on. Kelly Macdonald, Kate Dickie, and Leah Byrne round out the ensemble.
Critics embraced the series as one of the year's most satisfying crime dramas, praising Goode's prickly, against-type lead performance and Frank's patient, character-first storytelling. It became a hit for Netflix and was renewed for a second season within months of its debut, confirming appetite for more of Morck's gloomy, meticulous detective work. It streams on Netflix.
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