“Dept. Q” arrives on Netflix with a pedigree that promises more than it delivers. Created by Scott Frank and Chandni Lakhani, the British crime thriller adapts Danish writer Jussi Adler-Olsen’s Department Q novels and moves the action to Edinburgh. It premiered on 29 May 2025. It runs 10 episodes across its first season. It stars Matthew Goode as DCI Carl Morck. And it has already been renewed for a second season, Netflix confirmed in August 2025.
That renewal tells you something about the math of streaming. But it doesn’t tell you whether the show earns it.
Trailer, via Netflix.
A Basement Office and a Broken Detective
The premise is sturdy. Morck is a top-rated detective returning to police work after an ambush shooting. He was badly wounded. His colleague and friend James Hardy, played by Jamie Sives, was paralysed. A young uniformed police officer was killed. Morck gets a muted welcome because his colleagues regard him as arrogant and asocial. He is. He’s also required, against his will, to attend therapy sessions for the after-effects of the shooting.
The Scottish government wants unsolved crimes solved. Successful outcomes generate good headlines. Good headlines improve public opinion about the police. Morck’s commander, Moira Jacobson, played by Kate Dickie, is offered a substantial budget to set up a new unsolved crimes unit. She’d rather use the money for her own department and current cases. So she assigns Morck as the sole officer on a large pile of cold cases and gives him a semi-derelict basement office to work in.
The office was formerly the Shower Quarters of the police station. That’s where the Q in the title comes from. It’s a good joke. It’s also the show’s central metaphor, and “Dept. Q” leans on it hard.
Akram Salim Walks Down the Stairs
The show gets its engine from an unlikely source. Akram Salim, played by Alexej Manvelov, is a Syrian former policeman working as a civilian employee. He wants more challenging work. He quietly insinuates himself into Morck’s basement and gets tasked with organising case files. While doing that, he suggests investigating the missing Crown Office solicitor Merritt Lingard.
That suggestion becomes the main case of season one. Lingard is played by Chloe Pirrie. The team that forms around the investigation includes a recovering Hardy and young constable Rose Dickson, played by Leah Byrne. Kelly Macdonald appears as Dr Rachel Irving. Aaron McVeigh plays Jasper Stewart.
This is a misfit-team setup, and “Dept. Q” knows it. The question is whether the pieces click.
What Works and What Doesn’t
Goode is the anchor, and he’s well-cast. Morck is meant to be brilliant and insufferable, and Goode plays the arrogance without softening it into charm. The show doesn’t ask you to like him early. That’s the right call. The muted welcome from his colleagues lands because you understand exactly why no one is throwing a party.
Manvelov’s Akram is the more interesting creation. He’s not a sidekick. He’s a man with his own history and his own reasons for pushing into a basement nobody else wants to enter. The show treats his Syrian background and his former police work as facts about him, not as a lesson. That restraint serves the character.
The Edinburgh setting is used well enough. Cold cases suit a city with old stone and bad weather. The show doesn’t oversell the atmosphere. It lets the basement do the work.
Where “Dept. Q” stumbles is pace. Ten episodes is a lot of runway for one disappearance. The Lingard case has to carry the season, and the show stretches it. Episodes that should tighten instead circle. The therapy sessions are meant to give Morck interiority, but they repeat the same beat: he doesn’t want to be there, he deflects, the therapist persists. After the third version of that scene, you get it.
The Cold Case Machine
The show’s real subject isn’t Lingard. It’s the machinery around her. Jacobson’s budget maneuver is the most honest thing in the series. She’s offered money to solve old crimes, and she’d rather spend it on current ones. That’s not villainy. That’s bureaucracy, and “Dept. Q” understands it.
The government’s interest in cold cases is explicitly about headlines. Not justice. Not closure for families. Headlines. The show states this plainly, and it’s the sharpest thing in the writing. A unit created for public relations purposes is staffed by a man who doesn’t care about public relations. That’s a real conflict, and it doesn’t need a twist to be interesting.
Hardy’s paralysis adds weight without becoming a plot device. He’s recovering, he’s in the team, and his presence reminds Morck of the night that broke him. Sives plays him with a quiet that contrasts well against Goode’s noise.
Where the Season Loses Its Grip
The Lingard investigation has to justify ten episodes, and it doesn’t quite. The show introduces complications that feel like padding rather than escalation. New information arrives at a steady drip, but the drip doesn’t build pressure. It just fills time.
The supporting cast is strong on paper. Pirrie, Macdonald, Dickie, Byrne. But several of them get less to do than their billing suggests. Macdonald’s Dr Rachel Irving is a presence more than a character. Dickie’s Jacobson is the most fully realized of the supporting roles, because her motives are clear and her methods are mundane.
The show also struggles with tone in places. It wants to be a procedural and a character study and a conspiracy thriller. It’s best when it’s the first two. When it reaches for the third, it gets vague. The Scottish government’s interest in cold cases is a good premise. The show doesn’t need to make it sinister. It’s already cynical enough.
The Case for Renewal
Netflix renewed “Dept. Q” for a second season in August 2025. That’s a vote of confidence, and it’s not unreasonable. The show has a strong lead, a workable format, and a premise that can generate cases for years. The basement is a renewable resource. So is Morck’s bad attitude.
But the first season doesn’t fully solve its own case. It sets up a team, establishes a dynamic, and then spends too long on a single investigation that can’t sustain the weight. A tighter season, fewer episodes, more focus on the unit’s internal logic, would have served the material better.
The show’s best asset is the tension between what the unit is for and what it actually does. Jacobson wants headlines. Morck wants to solve things. Akram wants to matter. Hardy wants to work. Rose wants to prove herself. Those are four different goals in one basement, and the show is most alive when they collide.
What the Score Says
“Dept. Q” holds a Metacritic score of 69 out of 100, which rounds to 6.9 out of 10. That’s a fair number. It reflects a show with real strengths and real problems, neither of which cancel the other out.
The strengths are Goode, Manvelov, the Edinburgh setting, and the bureaucratic cynicism at the heart of the premise. The problems are pace, repetition, and a central mystery that doesn’t earn its episode count. The show is watchable. It’s not yet essential.
The second season is the real test. Season one establishes the team and the format. Season two has to prove the show can tell a story that justifies the time it asks for. If it can tighten the pacing and give the supporting cast more to do, “Dept. Q” could become something worth recommending without caveats.
For now, it’s a solid start with a clear ceiling. The basement is a good place to work. The show just needs to stop standing in the doorway.
KEY FACTS
- Title: Dept. Q
- Network: Netflix
- Premiere date: 29 May 2025
- Seasons: 2 (renewed August 2025)
- Episodes: 10
- Creators: Scott Frank, Chandni Lakhani
- Based on: Department Q book series by Jussi Adler-Olsen
- Lead: Matthew Goode as DCI Carl Morck
- Metacritic: 69/100
- Score: 6.9 of 10
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