Dept Q - Netflix
Just as I was despairing of anything of the calibre of Apple’s Slow Horses hitting Netflix, they turn around and give us Dept Q. It was easy to tell that this would be a quality drama - just a quick glance at the cast and crew gave its credentials away. The series has been adapted from the Scandi-noir novels of Dane Jussi Adler-Olsen by American screenwriter and director Scott Frank (he wrote the screenplay for Out of Sight, Minority Report, and a host of others, and wrote and directed Godless and The Queen’s Gambit). Screenwriters Chandni Lakhani and Stephen Greenhorn have brought characters and dialogue to vivid life.
The lead protagonist is irascible police detective Carl Morck (the lanky, brooding Matthew Goode is perfect in this role), who was recently shot by an unknown criminal who burst in on Morck and two police colleagues at the site of the murder of an elderly man. Morck was lucky, but his friend and colleague DCI James Hardy ( Jamie Sives, last seen in the excellent Crime) was left paralysed while the junior policeman who was hesitant to disobey orders and let Morck and Hardy into the crime-scene was killed outright. If Morck feels guilty about bullying the policeman who ended up dead, he doesn’t show it, but he is a frequent visitor to his paralysed colleague’s hospital bed.