Nordic noir, a literary genre that emerged in the 1990s, turned bleak Scandinavian landscapes into the perfect backdrop for harsh tales of crime and justice. Books became films and TV shows, which, in turn, spawned many English-language spin-offs – from Kenneth Branagh’s Wallander, to remakes of The Bridge and The Killing – as well as influencing the aesthetics of shows like Broadchurch and Top of the Lake. As our infatuation with staring into the moral abyss shows no sign of waning, Netflix transplants these northern shadows to Scotland – a cousin, anyway, of the Nordic region– for abduction thriller Dept Q.
Cantankerous copper Carl Morck (Matthew Goode) shows up to the scene of a murder, alongside his partner, and best friend, James Hardy (Jamie Sives). Within moments, they are both shot by a mystery intruder, leaving Hardy permanently disabled and Morck with debilitating PTSD. But his boss – cynical DCS Moira Jacobson (Kate Dickie) – has a plan. Assigned a special budget to investigate high-profile cold cases as a public relations exercise, she siphons off most of the funds for her own use and sends Morck down to the basement to command a ragtag team – including former Syrian police officer Akram (Alexej Manvelov) and peppy cadet Rose (Leah Byrne) – in Department Q. Their first case? A bullish prosecutor, Merritt Lingard (Chloe Pirrie), who disappeared off a ferry several years earlier. “I think many are good mysteries,” Akram adjudicates, scanning the files the department is presented with. “Worthy,” he corrects himself.
Based on the series by Danish author Jussi Adler-Olsen, which have already been adapted for six films that have proven smash hits in his homeland, Netflix has relocated the action to Scotland. I guess neither country has great weather. From there, Dept Q plays out like Slow Horses – Apple’s adaptation of Mick Herron’s books about an ostracised team of MI5 reprobates – combined with all the cliches of the crime genre. Morck is bitter, living in close quarters with his ex-wife’s “jizzed up” teenage son. He constantly rubs his colleagues up the wrong way; it doesn’t help that he’s English in an office full of Scots. “Get it together, you f***ing loser,” he tells himself, as his mental state begins to fray. Akram, meanwhile, is a sort of “magical immigrant”, a spin on the discredited trope of using Black characters as brilliant, often supernatural guides. Enormously competent, intellectually accomplished, capable of performing a Vulcan death grip. The mystery itself draws heavily from the iconography of movies like The Silence of the Lambs and Misery. It is, in short, a lazy assembly of tropes that have worked better elsewhere.
And yet, despite all that, I found myself gripped. This first series unfurls over the course of nine hour-long episodes, giving it plenty of time to grow on you. Goode is a mercurial performer, capable of being, by turns, appealingly smooth and discomfitingly sleazy. He is a good fit for a “defective detective” role like this. The rest of the cast – including Scottish luminaries like Mark Bonnar and Kelly Macdonald – round out a good ensemble. Scott Frank, who here adapts Adler-Olsen’s first novel, The Keeper of Lost Causes, alongside Chandni Lakhani (Vigil), previously did fine work on The Queen’s Gambit, turning Anya Taylor-Joy into a star but building a constellation around her. Goode is more of a known quantity, but Frank gives him and his colleagues plenty of big, brassy dialogue (Merritt always “had one foot in the inferno”; Rose, “who hasn’t had a panic attack in this horrible world we live in?”) that stays just the right side of cringe.
But, most importantly, Dept Q works because it takes its mystery seriously. This may seem an obvious thing for a crime drama to do, but frequently the modern mystery is gossamer thin, privileging the psychodrama of the detective over crude tools like, you know, plot. Dept Q builds a big, meaty plot (two actually, if you include the unresolved question of who shot Detectives Morck and Hardy) that’s half-procedural, half-horror. Over time it becomes more compelling, which is a strong recommendation. For all that it looks like being another tired story about a tortured detective finding purpose in his work, it ends up being, really, the tale of an abducted woman, and the ripples left by that crime.
The formula for Dept Q, then, is quite simple. Reassemble the successful parts of other shows, but line them up in service of a gut-clenchingly tense narrative. Saying that the show privileges plot over character might sound like a backhanded compliment, but it’s what makes Dept Q an effective thriller. Eventually, you learn to stop worrying about cliche and love the ride.
