Jump Street and Slough House are getting a new neighbor. Department Q is the latest purgatory for law enforcement screwups on the block. In fact, it’s barely a department at all. It’s a complete stunt—they can’t even get their leader a car! That is, until its intrepid band of employees turn it into something very real.
“DCI Carl Morck is a brilliant cop but a terrible colleague. His razor-sharp sarcasm has made him no friends in Edinburgh police,” a synopsis of the upcoming Netflix series reads. “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.”
Dept. Q—an adaptation of Jussi Adler-Olsen’s novels of the same name—hails from Scott Frank, the co-creator, writer, and director of The Queen’s Gambit. This isn’t his first time dealing with gumshoes. Frank’s last series, Monsieur Spade, was also a mystery tale, led by Clive Owen as Dashiell Hammett’s fictional private detective, Sam Spade.
This series puts Matthew Goode—who Frank previously worked with on The Lookout and specifically wrote this character for—in the driver’s seat. Other stars and Dept. Q denizens include Chloe Pirrie, Alexej Manvelov, Kelly Macdonald, and Leah Byrne. The nine-episode series premieres May 29 on Netflix.
