The Department Q first look marries Cold Case with Sherlock
Matthew Goode stars in a new Netflix detective series from The Queen's Gambit creator Scott Frank.
Photo: Jamie Simpson/Netflix
It’s about damn time Matthew Goode clocked in for his shift as an irascible Sherlock Holmes-esque detective. The actor (A Discovery Of Witches, Downton Abbey) is teaming up with Scott Frank, writer-director of The Queen’s Gambit, for a new take on the ol’ “brilliant but cantankerous detective” archetype. Set to premiere May 29 on Netflix, the Department Q first look finds Goode out in the cold… the cold cases, that is.
Per a synopsis from the streamer, “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 paralysed, 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.”
Frank’s Netflix follow-up for Queen’s Gambit is adapted from the novels of the same name by Danish author Jussi Adler-Olsen. (In between Gambit and Department Q, Scott helped adapt Dashiell Hammett’s detective Sam Spade for AMC.) “There was just something about it. The title, this notion of something called Department Q, stayed with me. And so I met with the author while I was shooting [2014’s] A Walk Among The Tombstones in New York, and I’d actually had the books for a couple of years by then,” Frank told Netflix’s Tudum. Though he wasn’t sure when he’d get around to adapting the series, Adler-Olsen gave his blessing: “He said, ‘I trust you’ and that he’d always hoped I would end up writing and directing it.” Looks like dreams do come true. You can check out the Department Q first look below.
Department Q first look (Photo courtesy Netflix)
Department Q (Photo courtesy Netflix)
Department Q (Courtesy Netflix)
Department Q (Photo: Jamie Simpson/Netflix)
Department Q (Photo courtesy of Netflix)
Department Q (Photo: Justin Downing/Netflix)
Department Q (Photo courtesy Netflix)
Department Q (Photo: Justin Downing/Netflix)