Dept Q: What We Know About Netflix’s New British Detective Drama

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Netflix is leaning in to the success of its British original dramas

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The beauty of Netflix? It’s truly international. Think original dramas in Polish, Spanish, Korean and, of course, English – and in the case of the latter, those that really resonate with a British audience. This spans everything from the record-breaking Adolescence and the conversation-starting Toxic Town to the upcoming Pride and Prejudice reboot, binge-worthy Fool Me Once to heartwarming Heartstopper and unsettling Baby Reindeer, even to global hits like Bridgerton and Black Doves.

Next on the agenda is Dept Q, a brand new procedural detective drama centring on an Englishman fighting crime in Scotland, getting under the skin of everyone around him as he does. It’s a premise that would feel right at home on the BBC – think Unforgotten, Line of Duty, Broadchurch – and that’s how we know we’re onto a winner. Here’s when we will get to see it.

Netflix’s Dept Q: Plot, Cast, Release Date & More

Matthew Goode as Carl Morck in Dept Q. (Netflix)

What Will Happen?

Dept Q centres on Carl Morck (Matthew Goode), a former top-rated detective wracked with guilt in the wake of a horrifying shooting which killed one fellow cop and left his partner paralysed. We’re based in Edinburgh, and further north in Aberdeen, a 16-year-old cold case has just been solved.

‘The optics of that look really good, because right now they’re lacking finance and crime figures are going up,’ lead star Goode explains. ‘So Kate Dickie’s character – the boss of the police force – her higher-ups say, “Let’s form a cold case unit”.’ When he returns to work after the tragic on-duty attack, Morck is asked to head up the new unit, nicknamed Department Q.

Committing himself to his new duties and joined by a team of misfits, Morck uncovers dark webs of secrets he needs to untangle.

‘DCI Carl Morck is a brilliant cop but a terrible colleague,’ Netflix’s synopsis reads. ‘His razor-sharp sarcasm has made him no friends in Edinburgh police. After a shooting that leaves a young PC dead, and his partner paralysed, he finds himself exiled to the basement and the sole member of Department Q; a newly formed cold case unit. The department is a PR stunt, there to distract the public from the failures of an under-resourced, failing police force that is glad to see the back of him. But more by accident than design, Carl starts to build a gang of waifs and strays who have everything to prove. So, when the stone-cold trail of a prominent civil servant who disappeared several years ago starts to heat up, Carl is back doing what he does best – rattling cages and refusing to take no for an answer.’

Mark Bonnar as Stephen Burns in Dept Q. (Netflix)

Chloe Pirrie as Merritt Lingard in Dept Q. (Netflix)

Where Was It Filmed?

Dept Q is set in Edinburgh – and it was filmed there, too. ‘I hadn’t really seen a show in Edinburgh before, and it’s a beautiful city,’ Dept Q’s writer-director Scott Frank says. ‘When I went to go and look at the city, I was like, “OK, this is amazing. It’s the perfect combination between the modern and the medieval.” They’re there side by side and it just works in such a lovely way.’

Lead star Matthew Goode is English, and Frank wrote Dept Q with him in mind. ‘I knew that he could do this and that he would lend this undeniable intelligence with his flintiness, but that he could also be emotional without being sentimental,’ Frank says.

But in casting Goode in these Scottish surroundings, ‘I realised the main character is going to be English, not Scottish, and that it would be really fun to play up his loathing of the Scottish people for no other reason than his ex-wife was Scottish, so he takes it out on everyone else,’ Frank says.

Leah Byrne as Detective Constable Rose Dickson in Dept Q. (Netflix)

What Is Dept Q Based On?

Dept Q is based on Danish author Jussi Adler-Olsen’s Department Q novels, which centre on Carl Mørck and are set in Copenhagen. ‘Scott brilliantly transposed [the book] from Denmark to Scotland,’ lead star Goode says. ‘Edinburgh is smaller than Copenhagen, but both are big port cities. [With its] gothic architecture, and it being the judicial center of Scotland, it’s just a really lovely fit.’

Scott had been toying with the idea of adapting Adler-Olsen’s novels for two decades before this Netflix series came to fruition. They finally met when Scott was shooting A Walk Among the Tombstones (2014) in New York, when Adler-Olsen gave the writer his approval.

Ten novels have been published in Adler-Olsen’s series so far, with an eleventh published in Danish in March, with an English translation presumably forthcoming. The first novel in the series is titled The Keeper of Lost Causes – and it seems this is the plot Netflix’s Dept Q will focus on. The Keeper of Lost Causes introduces us to Morck, whose first cold case involves the five-year disappearance of a liberal politician. She’s presumed dead, but there isn’t a body – yet…