Dept. Q

Dept. Q is a Netflix crime drama created by Scott Frank and based on Danish author Jussi Adler-Olsen’s Department Q novels. The series relocates the stories from Denmark to contemporary Edinburgh, while retaining their central idea: a small police team investigates cases that have been abandoned by ordinary detectives. Netflix released the first season on May 29, 2025.

Matthew Goode stars as Detective Chief Inspector Carl Morck, a gifted but abrasive investigator whose career is shaken by a shooting that kills one colleague and leaves another, Detective Sergeant Hardy, badly injured. Carl is subsequently assigned to the basement of Edinburgh police headquarters to establish “Department Q,” a unit intended to clear cold cases. His demotion is presented as both punishment and an opportunity: he resists collaboration, while his superiors expect the new department to produce results with minimal resources.

The first investigation concerns Merritt Lingard, a prominent politician who disappeared during a ferry trip five years earlier. The case had been treated as a likely suicide, but Carl and his colleagues find evidence that she survived the disappearance and was held captive. The inquiry therefore becomes a race to identify the perpetrator and locate Merritt before her ordeal ends. This case provides the season’s major procedural mystery, rather than a sequence of unrelated weekly crimes.

Frank also makes the team’s formation part of the drama. Rose Dickson, played by Leah Byrne, joins Carl as a young detective carrying her own professional frustrations, while Akram Salim, portrayed by Alexej Manvelov, brings a distinctive perspective and investigative skill. Their uneasy working relationship gradually changes Carl’s isolated approach. The show uses Edinburgh locations and Scottish institutional detail to give its adaptation a specific setting, rather than presenting an anonymous metropolitan police world.

The title’s letter is not merely a stylistic label. In the novels, Department Q is the name of Copenhagen’s cold-case division, and the television version preserves that recognizable premise while changing the geography and characters’ circumstances. That change lets the series work as an adaptation and as a standalone Scottish thriller. It combines police procedure with the psychological consequences of violence: Carl’s guilt, the team’s mistrust, and Merritt’s prolonged captivity all affect how evidence is interpreted. The basement office, the department’s low status, and the pressure to justify its existence give the investigation an institutional frame. That focus distinguishes Dept. Q from generic detective fiction.