Very British-TV in spirit, though set in Edinburgh, Netflix’s Department Q is more than a serviceable crime thriller. Instead, it’s an engaging watch, with the right amount of camaraderie, suspense, and mystery to keep you glued to the screen. If you’re thinking of putting this in the background and then disconnecting, we recommend another show. Department Q requires your attention in the best way. And if you give it, it might just surprise you.
Anyone familiar with the British TV vibes will recognize what the show is doing as it starts to build a team that doesn’t exactly look like anything we would expect out of network TV in the US. That is, perhaps, one of Department Q’s biggest strengths. It’s not trying to be something different than what it is, and for anyone very used to the High Potential and NCIS type teams, this setup not only works, but it also manages to distinguish itself. It helps that there’s a source material. Department Q is based on a book series, so it’s got somewhere to draw from.
The standout is, of course, DCI Carl Morck, a less-than-charming Matthew Goode, who manages to be more interesting because of how messy and brash he is. It’s hard to root against Morck, even though it’s also hard at times to root for him. There’s no Matthew Clairmont in Carl Morck, and that works to Goode’s advantage. If anything, there are shades of Declan, his character in Leap Year. It might have been a while since we’ve seen Goode play an asshole, but he’s still more than capable of doing that and also selling the heart of gold thing that is needed for a character like Morck to work.
An outstanding Alexej Manvelov as Akram Salim is the perfect complement to Morck, the straight man to his grumpy and often rude persona. Akram is often the guy you’re rooting for in the makeshift team that ends up forming, which includes Leah Byrne’s Rose and Jamie Sieves’ DS Hardy. But overall, the team does what most teams in investigative-type procedurals do, and balance each other out. They just do it without falling into the stereotypes TV has made the standard in the past few years.
The mystery at the center is both engaging enough and easy enough to follow that viewers will feel like they can put the pieces together alongside the team, but that they can’t really solve it themselves. Not fully. That’s always a good thing on a show like this. And though Chloe Pirrie’s Merritt Lingard isn’t always the most relatable character, that might just be one of the things the show does better. There are no perfect victims, and we don’t need victims to be perfect to be worthy of a proper investigation.
Overall, Department Q is an intriguing, captivating show that keeps you on your toes but doesn’t deliver the kind of answers that feel like they’re coming out of nowhere. And though Season 1 feels like it barely scratches the surface of who some of these characters are, it does a good enough job of setting up the team and establishing the dynamics that we cannot help but want more. There are, after all, many more cases to investigate. There always are.
A fairly accurate assessment of DEPARTMENT Q —I would offer up that there are plenty of signs of Matthew de Clermont in Carl- his rage, I won’t take any bullshit looks and sometimes words and his superiority complex- which was more suppressed as Matthew de Clermont. Netflix has a hit in this as evidence by being number one in several foreign countries… hopefully they take the bait and give us a season two so we get to know Carl and the gang more deeply.