Dept Q

What’s it about?

Dept Q follows a tormented detective and his misfit team solving cold cases in Edinburgh’s gritty underworld.

Starring

Matthew Goode, Chloe Pirrie, Jamie Sives, Alexej Manvelov, Leah Byrne, Kelly Macdonald, Kate Dickie, Mark Bonnar

An Introduction to Dept Q

Welcome to Edinburgh, where the weather is grim and the office coffee’s worse. Enter Carl Morck (A Discovery of Witches’ Matthew Goode), a surly and intolerant Detective Chief Inspector (DCI). Dept Q kicks off with a literal bang, as a routine police wellness check turns into a bloodbath. A masked gunman appears on the scene, leaving one officer dead, another paralyzed, and Morck himself barely clinging to consciousness.

Four months later, Morck is back on duty, radiating the charm of a wet sock. The Scottish Government have provided a budget to set up a new department in order to clear some ‘cold cases’ (unsolved crimes pending new information) and improve the crime-solving optics. Morck gets the assignment and a grotty basement office dubbed Dept Q. Enter Akram (Alexej Manvelov), a Syrian ex-cop moonlighting in IT and we have the core of the department.

Their first case? Merritt Lingard (Chloe Pirrie), a prosecutor who vanished mid-ferry ride with her disabled brother. She’s presumed dead, but Akram’s got a hunch and Morck’s got nothing better to do. Thus begins the slow, grimy unravelling of a mystery that’s as much about the ghosts in their heads as the ones in the files.

Summary

Dept Q is what happens when you take a Nordic noir, transplant it to Scotland, and marinate it in existential dread and passive-aggressive banter. Carl Morck, our emotionally-scorched lead, is handed the poisoned chalice of running a cold-case unit – Department Q – after a workplace shooting leaves his career and psyche in tatters. His boss, Moira (Kate Dickie), sees it as a PR stunt. Carl sees it as exile.

Like Slow Horses, the show’s genius lies in its misfit ensemble: Akram, the quiet Syrian with a mysterious past that clearly involved some 24-style public relations; Rose (Leah Byrne), the panic-attack-prone cadet with a spine of steel; and Morck, who treats human interaction like a root canal. Together, they tackle the disappearance of Merritt Lingard, a prosecutor with more enemies than friends and a mysterious stalker.

Dept Q doesn’t just solve crimes – it dissects them. Each clue is a breadcrumb in a forest of trauma, corruption, and the occasional dead-eyed bureaucrat. The pacing is deliberate and the dialogue razor-sharp. By the finale, Dept Q has done more than crack a case – it’s cracked open its characters. Morck finds something resembling redemption, Akram proves he’s more than a sidekick, and Rose earns her stripes. It’s not tidy, but it’s true. And in a genre drowning in clichés, Dept Q manages to feel fresh, feral, and fiercely human.

Check out the Season 1 Trailer here: