Matthew Goode Finds His Place Among the Misfits in 'Dept. Q'

Mysteries and crime-solving stories are a source of comfort, a combination of seeing someone competent in charge of righting wrongs, bringing order out of chaos by revealing the murderer hidden amongst our ranks. It's not surprising that the chaos of the last decade has led to the latest rise of mystery series and films in Western culture, offering viewers a way to cling to the idea that society can be made a little stronger in 44-minute increments, or, in the case of Dept. Q, a binge-watch of nine installments on Netflix.

In recent years, Netflix has tended toward making what I like to think of as "imitation programming." It doesn't have the Star Wars franchise, so it makes Rebel Moon, it adapts Millarworld stories in lieu of Marvel, and The Crown was a six-year substitute for Masterpiece. Currently, Netflix doesn't have a Slow Horses, so it has made Dept. Q. Based on the Department Q novels by Danish author Jussi Adler-Olsen, Dept. Q does the typical resetting of the Nordic noir in Scotland for U.K. and U.S. audiences, with PBS favorite Matthew Goode* in the lead as the novel's Detective Chief Inspector Carl Morck, a stereotypical PTSD-suffering, cranky, misanthropic investigator. 

(*If you're wondering why he's not making an appearance in the final Downton movie, it's because he opted to star in this series instead.) 

The show hits all the tropes: moved there for marriage that collapsed, last assignment left his former partner, Hardy (Jamie Sives), partly paralyzed, and Morck guilt-ridden, and his combative therapy sessions with Dr. Irving (Kelly Macdonald) are hilarious and also unhelpful. Unsurprisingly, his attitude problems and mental health issues lead his boss, Moira (Katie Dickie), to reassign him to a new department, solving cold cases far away from everyone else, where he eventually ends up with a crew comprised of those who didn't fit in with the main roster. 

It's not your imagination; Dept. Q literally cast multiple former Annika cast members in the exact same roles they played in that "Nordic-Noir-Reset-in-Scotland" series, which, for PBS fans, will add an extra layer of deja vu to the proceedings. (Yes, I did look for Nicola Walker walking by the background. Maybe they'll guest cast her for Season 2.) However, the thing is, Annika was good because it featured excellent actors as part of the larger ensemble, which helped elevate the material across the board, making the show feel better than it probably was. Dickie and Sives bring that same solid base for Goode to work within, and the result is, once again, a show that feels far better than it's synopsis would suggest.

The rest of the cast is also determined to turn the stereotypes they've been given inside out. Morck has custody of his teenage son, Jasper (Aaron McVeigh), and their relationship is far more nuanced than the typical procedural. Alexej Manvelov (Before We Die) is Syrian immigrant IT nerd Akram Salim who manages to make the role of "the IT Guy" multilayered, cool under fire and yet startling vicious; Leah Byrne (Deadwater Fell) takes sidelined-for-being-young-and-female DC Rose Dickson and creates a cadet that gives shades of Star Trek's Ensign Tilly, believably capable even as she falls back into the habits that keep her from promotion. 

Both are less recruited than simply never go away once they're introduced, but that's fine because the chemistry they bring to the table works so well with Goode and Sives' partnership.

There's a sense that these four could make any mystery fun, if not interesting, and considering the paint-by-numbers plot (which, by the way, is straight from the 2007 original novel), they basically do. Interspersed between the team's slow coming together, prosecutor Merritt Lingard (Chloe Pirrie) is introduced as she fails to get a conviction against wealthy business magnate Graham Finch (Douglas Russell), who repays her with death threats.

At nine episodes, Dept. Q is unfortunately on the overlong side; however, it doesn't feel like it suffers from "Netflix bloat" as much as it feels like the production just really wanted the extra time to dig into every character. Showrunner Scott Frank, whose adaptation of The Queen's Gambit was a surprise hit in 2020, has an innate understanding of how to utilize the binge model to his maximum benefit. Like with that chess-based series, Frank allows each installment space to sink into the twists and turns that make every character tick, giving these actors a chance to do some genuinely lovely character work. 

Most mystery series fall into one of two categories: those that prioritize the details of the mystery-of-the-week/season over character development, and those where solving mysteries is just what the characters do, with the real draw being the found family the show creates. Frank manages to incorporate both in his nine-hour adaptation, but it does give the series a sense of being a tad overloaded; nearly every episode feels like trying to eat an eight-course meal in under an hour.

Dept. Q isn't quite as laugh-out-loud as Slow Horses; its Scottish sensibilities don't allow more than a dry chuckle. (It's also blessedly free of fart jokes.) But it's a solid, enjoyable, one-step-above-cozy crime series, even if it would have been far better served as a weekly release than a binge. There are no overarching conspiracies that never resolve — even the most convoluted twists are given answers because that's what viewers need right now: satisfying conclusions that make the world feel a little brighter than it did yesterday. With nine follow-up novels currently in print, hopefully, Dept. Q will be delivering them for a long time.

All nine episodes of Dept. Q are streaming on Netflix starting Thursday, May 29, 2025. Season 2 has not yet been commissioned.