Netflix’s Dept. Q Review: Make Way For Another Bad-Tempered, Traumatised TV Detective

This review is spoiler free.

First of all, let’s make a deal: Matthew Goode’s DCI Carl Morck is the last brilliant-but-grumpy traumatised city detective with a messy homelife that crime TV is allowed. They can have him and his crew of misfits solving cold cases out of a Scottish police basement, but that’s the lot. A line must be drawn. From now on, the genre will have to work harder to deliver up detective characters with personality types other than ‘punchably abrasive’.

Morck’s personality is so punchably abrasive in this nine-episode Netflix series that he even makes professionally dashing actor Matthew Goode (The Crown, A Discovery of Witches) an unattractive prospect. Morck has his reasons, what with recovering from an attack that paralysed his partner, and raising a wayward teen, but it’s not long before his on-screen rancour begins to rankle.

Thank heavens then, for Goode’s co-stars, who smooth out Morck’s unlovely causticness with a bit of mystery and quirk. Alexej Manvelov plays Akram, an unruffled, unfailingly polite Syrian refugee assigned to Morck’s new cold-case department as an admin assistant, but whose talents extend far beyond filing and dictation. Akram’s a specialist in the baking of sweet treats and the crushing of windpipes, and comes with a tantalising question mark hovering over his past.

Adding a pop of cartoonish colour to the dept.’s dreary HQ is Leah Byrne’s Rose, a young detective consigned to deskwork after a traumatic incident sent her spiralling. The bright, chatty daughter of a former detective, Rose adds likeability and humour, while Akram’s elliptical past sustains a portion of Dept. Q’s intrigue.

Joining them in the supporting cast is an embarrassment of acting greats including Kelly Macdonald, Mark Bonnar, Shirley Henderson, Jamie Sives, Clive Russell, Stuart Bowman and Kate Dickie. There’s so much Scottish talent in this Edinburgh-set story (transposed by US showrunner Scott Frank from Copenhagen in Danish writer Jussi Adler-Olsen’s original books – already turned into a popular film series in Denmark) that it almost makes up for the fact that Morck is English, another factor that doesn’t endear him to the locals.

Once Department Q has unstacked its furniture from its Edinburgh station’s disused urinals and shower cubicles, it takes on its first case (there are Adler-Olsen 10 books, and this first series tackles only the first). Four years ago, a woman went missing, and was suspected to have taken her own life. Instinct, old-fashioned gumshoeing and Morck’s trust-nobody approach take the gang on a journey to a remote Scottish island, and to a conspiracy that (possibly) goes all the way to the top.

Meanwhile, there’s a parallel story about a young and ambitious prosecutor, played very well by Chloe Pirrie, an investigation into the shooting that landed James Sives’ DS Hardy in a hospital bed without the use of his legs, and we sit in on Morck’s flirt-fight sessions with Kelly Macdonald‘s police therapist Dr Rachel Irving – another strong supporting performance.

The split narrative plays with chronology and gives us a couple of routes into the case but mostly, this is a straightforward procedural, with the expected parade of suspicious higher-ups, red herrings, twists and binge-watch-appropriate cliffhangers. It’s all very familiar territory, from the traumatised lead to his oddball sidekicks, to the nasty revelation of what befell our missing person.

A sense of mordant humour doesn’t exactly set the show apart, but at least sets it a short distance away from the least imaginative versions of stories like these. Morck’s wife isn’t dead, for instance. He doesn’t spend his nights at home drinking bourbon and playing old home movies, but arguing with a sullen teen, and with his batty lodger – a perpetual mature student played by comedian Sanjeev Kholi.

It gets by, is the point. Dept. Q is intriguing enough and just about funny enough to make it a worthwhile way to pass a few evenings in front of the TV. Thanks to Akram and Rose, there are the makings of a loveable ragtag crew here, even if Morck falls short of reaching the heights of Slow Horses’ curmudgeon Jackson Lamb. Given a recommission or two, it could get into its stride and lean more into what makes it distinct from the crowd – the excellent cast, the dark humour – but this is hardly an age of new series winning easy recommissions.

The depth of talent in this show’s cast almost works against Dept. Q. Faced with the combination of Mark Bonnar and Jamie Sives on screen, it’s hard not to remember their brilliance with richer characters and stronger dialogue in Neil Forsyth crime drama Guilt. The same goes for Matthew Goode, Kelly Macdonald, Shirley Henderson, Kate Dickie, excellent actors all, who can’t help but feel boxed in by this generic material. They all make Dept. Q better of course, but one can’t help but imagine how good this lot could have been outside the trammelled lines of a crime procedural.

Dept. Q is streaming now on Netflix.

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