Netflix’s latest gambit with Scott Frank looks to be a noir crime feast for the eyes. That is, at least, if these first look images from Dept. Q are to be believed. The latest drama series from The Queen’s Gambit showrunner is an adaptation of a popular, 10-book series of Nordic noir crime fiction by Jussi Adler-Olsen, a Danish author. And while the show may have swapped locales, moving its star Matthew Goode‘s Carl Morck to Edinburgh, Scotland from Denmark, it doesn’t look like its lost anything else in this English-language on-screen translation.
Here’s the official synopsis from Netflix:
DCI Carl Morck is a brilliant cop but a terrible colleague. His razor-sharp sarcasm has made him no friends in Edinburgh police. After a shooting that leaves a young PC dead, and his partner paralyzed, 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.
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Want to know more about the cast and see the aforementioned first-look images from one of our most-anticipated new series? Keep reading on — all that ye seek is in the next section below.
‘Dept. Q’ Looks Like The Perfect Sort Of Crime Thriller
According to Tudum, the cast includes the following:
- Matthew Goode (Downton Abbey, Stoker) as Detective Chief Inspector Carl Morck
- Chloe Pirrie (The Game, An Inspector Calls) as Merritt Lingard
- Jamie Sives (Annika, Guilt) as Detective Chief Inspector James Hardy
- Mark Bonnar (Operation Mincemeat, Unforgotten) as Stephen Burns
- Alexej Manvelov (Tom Clancy’s Jack Ryan, Chernobyl) as Akram Salim
- Leah Byrne (Nightsleeper, The Last Bus) as Detective Constable Rose Dickson
- Kate Dickie (The Witch, Game of Thrones) as Detective Chief Superintendent Moira Jacobson
- Shirley Henderson (Bridget Jones’s Diary, Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets) as Claire Marsh
- Kelly Macdonald (No Country for Old Men, Gosford Park) as Dr. Rachel Irving
- Tom Bulpett (Father Brown, Casualty) as William Lingard
Of course, dark secrets await Detective Chief Inspector Carl Morck. “When we join the story, a 16-year-old case up in Aberdeen has been solved,” Goode explained to Tudum. “The optics of that look really good, because right now they’re lacking finance and crime figures are going up. So Kate Dickie’s character — the boss of the police force — her higher-ups say, ‘Let’s form a cold case unit.’ She puts Carl in charge because she can keep an eye on him in the basement.”
And as he dives further into his new responsibilities, Morck discovers “secrets as dark as a Scottish loch,” which forces him to hire “a team of misfits” to help him figure out the deep, dark mysteries held within these Edinburgh cold cases. And with a beautifully haunting, gothic setting like Scotland, who wouldn’t be ready to dig in and root around in its seedy underbelly, eh?
Needless to say, we’re looking forward to seeing Scott Frank’s take on these classic novels.
Source:
‘Dept Q. premieres on Netflix on May 29, 2025.
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