Dept. Q premieres May 29 on Netflix.
By Elazar Abrahams
Dept. Q is a gripping British adaptation of the popular Danish crime novels by Jussi Adler-Olsen, and it proves to be a strong addition to the detective crime genre. Though the season starts out slow, it gains impressive momentum over its nine episodes, delivering a truly compelling mystery anchored by a brooding lead performance from Matthew Goode.
Goode plays Carl Morck, a sharp but emotionally distant cop who’s been demoted to the basement of his station and assigned to a newly formed cold case unit: Department Q. There, he’s teamed with a ragtag group that includes the enthusiastic Assad (Alexej Manvelov) and the tech-savvy Rose (Kelly Macdonald), forming a dynamic that grows more engaging as the season progresses.
Rather than tackling a new mystery each week, the entire season follows a single case involving a prominent politician who’s gone missing and presumed dead. In truth, she’s been abducted and is being held in a tank underground, a terrifying predicament that the show uses to great effect. The cutting back and forth between the detectives’ slow progress and the victim’s chilling captivity, which is framed in a claustrophobic aspect ratio, adds a ticking-clock urgency to the investigation.
There’s a lot of familiar material here, from a disgraced detective, bureaucratic indifference, and even underground lairs, but it’s executed with a level of polish that makes it work. The show’s tone is gritty without being dour, and the visual language leans heavily into bleak, washed-out palettes and sharp shadows, grounding the narrative in a sense of realism.
What really elevates Dept. Q is the way it balances its procedural elements with character-driven storytelling. The personal baggage each team member brings to the job creates tension, but also opens space for genuine camaraderie. Still, there’s no question the main hook is the central mystery, and in that regard, the show excels.
I give Dept. Q a B+.
TV and City 