‘Dept. Q’ Is a Mesmerizing, Methodical Case Study in Competence

It’s been a while since we’ve encountered a burn as slow and satisfying as Netflix’s Scottish crime thriller, Dept. Q. Based on the book series by Danish crime writer Jussi Adler-Olsen, Dept. Q was adapted for the screen by Scott Frank, the screenwriter behind Hugh Jackman’s Logan, George Clooney’s Out of Sight, and another masterful Netflix slow-burn, Anya Taylor-Joy’s The Queen’s Gambit.

Here, a bearded and grizzled Matthew Goode — looking more like Ben Whishaw in Black Doves than his polished turns in The Crown or Downton Abbey — plays Detective Carl Morck, an epic asshole who might even make Dr. Gregory House bristle. There’s no hint of a teddy bear beneath Morck’s crusty exterior, and to be fair, he was already a prick before he got shot during the murder investigation that opens the series. That same incident also killed another officer and left his partner, Detective Hardy (Jamie Sives), paralyzed.

Upon returning from medical leave, Morck is shuffled into a newly created cold case unit, Department Q, located in the basement of the police station. His boss, Moira Jacobson (Kate Dickie), puts him there because she knows he’s a good cop, but also because she knows he has no interest in interacting with the public—and the feeling is mutual. He’s reluctantly paired with Akram (Alexej Manvelov), a Syrian refugee who was a cop back home, and eventually Rose (Leah Byrne), a cadet with PTSD trying to prove herself. From his hospital bed, Hardy also aids in their investigation.

Dept. Q takes an episode or two to sink its teeth in. I admit, I was initially dismayed to realize all nine hour-long episodes would focus on a single case — the four-year-old disappearance of former prosecutor Merritt Lingard (Chloe Pirrie). But by episode three or four, the show locks in. Its methodical pace becomes almost hypnotic, like a Tana French novel (co-writer Chandni Lakhani cut her teeth on Starz’s Dublin Murders, which never got the attention it deserved).

In fact, the show’s meticulous approach is somewhat reminiscent of The Wire, at least in its approach: Morck and Akram start from scratch on a case everyone else has written off. The audience, however, knows Merritt is still alive; we witness her locked in what turns out to be a massive hyperbaric chamber by two unidentified captors.

The catch? Merritt doesn’t know who abducted her, or why. Her captors won’t release or kill her until she figures it out herself. She’s prosecuted countless cases and made plenty of enemies, so narrowing it down is agonizing. For her, death would be preferable to her continued imprisonment.

Morck, meanwhile, battles bureaucracy, a short fuse, court-ordered therapy sessions with a therapist (Kelly Macdonald) he has no interest in seeing, and a nightmare of a stepson left in his care by his ex-wife. Honestly, it’s no wonder the guy’s a dick.

And yet, he does soften, a little, over the course of the series. The Department Q team gradually gels as they close in on Merritt’s case. Familiar detective-show tropes are here, sure, but what’s most refreshing is that Morck isn’t a genius. He’s not a Sherlock. He’s just relentless. He constantly insults his team, but he listens to them, and they know it. It’s quality competence porn: smart, determined people solving crimes the old-fashioned way.

The first three episodes are compelling as they establish the characters and the cold case. By episode four, the show becomes riveting, not just because the characters are interesting, but because they do the work. There’s no shortcutting with expositional magic or handwaving: just file-reading, interviews, and follow-ups until the pieces start to fall into place. That makes the resolution deeply satisfying because it’s earned. The found family that forms within Department Q is just the icing on the cake.