Dept. Q review: Matthew Goode digs up Edinburgh’s cold cases
Matthew Goode plays a prickly, damaged detective running a basement cold-case unit in Edinburgh. This adaptation of Jussi Adler-Olsen’s novels is moody, funny and worth staying up for.
Reviewed, edited and approved by Editor-in-chief Daniel Sköld · Updated 24 October 2026
Contents
For years, Matthew Goode has been British television’s go-to posh man. He wears a good coat well and looks faintly disappointed in everyone around him. So it’s a pleasant surprise, and a slightly alarming one, to find him in Dept. Q as a scruffy, sarcastic Edinburgh detective who seems to have slept in his suit, possibly for several months.
Netflix has taken Jussi Adler-Olsen’s Danish crime novels, moved them to the Scottish capital and handed them to the man who made The Queen’s Gambit. The result is a Nordic noir with a Scottish accent: dark, damp and much funnier than it has any right to be. It isn’t flawless, but it’s one of the better reasons to keep paying for Netflix.
Detective Chief Inspector Carl Morck is a top-rated officer coming back to work four months after he was badly wounded in an ambush shooting. His colleague and friend, Detective Inspector James Hardy, was shot and paralysed. Morck carries the guilt around like a rucksack full of bricks, and he isn’t nice company.
His bosses can’t quite get rid of him, so they promote him sideways. He’s put in charge of a new department for cold cases, which in practice means a basement, a lack of interest from upstairs and a team of misfits nobody else wanted. It’s a familiar set-up if you’ve watched Slow Horses, and several American critics have made the same comparison. Before long, one old case starts to look a lot less cold than everyone assumed. I’ll stop there, because the pleasure is in watching it unravel.
The Edinburgh setting does a lot of the work. This isn’t the shortbread-tin city of festival posters. It’s grey stone, wet streets and corridors that look as if they haven’t been painted since the Major government. Scottish crime drama has always done gloom well, from Taggart onwards, and Dept. Q happily joins that tradition.
Goode, grumpy and surrounded by a strong cast
Goode is the main reason to watch. Morck is rude, self-pitying and often unbearable, yet Goode keeps him watchable by making the sarcasm feel like a defence mechanism rather than a personality. Matt Roush of TV Insider put it well: Goode buries his natural charm in a scruffy, troubled character, and the series is better for it.
Around him is a very good British cast: Chloe Pirrie, Jamie Sives, Alexej Manvelov, Leah Byrne and Kelly Macdonald, who has the rare gift of making any scene feel more truthful. The team’s chemistry grows across the episodes and gives the series its warmth. That matters, because the main case is not exactly cheerful.
Scott Frank created the series with Chandni Lakhani. Frank also made The Queen’s Gambit and Godless, and he has a habit of letting scenes breathe for longer than a nervous commissioner would allow. Here, that mostly pays off.
It’s a Danish story with Scottish weather, a British cast and a leading man who has finally been allowed to stop being charming.
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What works, and where it drags
The best thing about Dept. Q is its tone. It moves between bleak and bone-dry funny without losing its footing. The humour comes from character, not quips, and the darker material is handled with more care than streaming thrillers usually manage. The central mystery pulls you through, and you’ll almost certainly say just one more episode at least once.
Series one runs to nine episodes, though, and you feel it. A couple of episodes in the middle sag, and some side plots seem to exist mainly to fill time. A tighter cut of seven might have produced something close to a classic. As it stands, it’s a very good crime drama with a bit of padding, which is still a better strike rate than most of what Netflix puts out.
What the critics say
The reviews were warm. The Guardian gave it four stars and called it a grimy, gothic treat, which is about as good a two-word pitch for Edinburgh as you’ll find. On Rotten Tomatoes it opened with a Certified Fresh critics’ score of 83 per cent and stayed in the 80s as more reviews came in. Audiences were keener still, with the audience score passing 90 per cent.
Not everyone was fully won over. Collider’s reviewer pointed to clunky editing and a bloated story, but suggested that the depth of Adler-Olsen’s source material could carry the series a long way. TV Insider called it a mordant, gritty crime drama. Viewers clearly agreed with the positives: after its release, the series pushed Sirens off the top of Netflix’s TV chart. Netflix renewed it for a second series in August 2025, so Morck’s basement is staying open.
Where to watch Dept. Q in the UK
Dept. Q is a Netflix original. It premiered in the UK on 29 May 2025, with every episode of series one released at once, and it’s available to all Netflix subscribers. It is rated 15 for strong language and violence, and it contains some distressing material. It’s not one to put on while the in-laws are round, unless you really want them to go home.
Verdict
Dept. Q is a gloomy, gripping and unexpectedly funny Scottish crime drama with Matthew Goode doing the best and grubbiest work of his career, plus a supporting cast that makes the basement feel like home. It’s a few episodes too long, but the mystery and the characters keep you watching. If you liked Slow Horses, Shetland or Nordic noir in general, this deserves a place on your list. Four stars.
Ashley Isaacs picks what's worth your evening – film, TV, streaming, music and books for men 45 and over with limited evenings and too many subscriptions. Reviews of what's new on Netflix, Prime Video, BBC iPlayer and the rest, crime dramas worth a weekend, and classics worth a second look. What's worth watching, what isn't, and where to find it in the UK.
One of Midcent's writers. Spotted something? Write to ashley@midcent.uk.
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