It’s been months of waiting but we finally have confirmation that Dept Q will be back for season 2.
Netflix’s Scotland-set crime thriller proved a hit with subscribers, spending six weeks in the streaming platform’s global top 10, with numerous gushing reactions online describing the drama as ‘pure greatness’.
Starring Matthew Goode as the rumpled detective Carl Morck, Dept Q was stuffed with twists, red herrings and complex characters, many of whom will be back for the second outing of the show.
The second season, which will again be filmed and set in Edinburgh, will see Goode return alongside Morck’s team of misfits – Alexej Manvelov as Syrian refugee and former police officer Akram, Leah Byrne as Rose and Jamie Sives as Hardy.
The nine-part show saw Morck squirrelled away in a basement police department, combing over cold cases. When Akram chanced upon the file involving the disappearance of an ambitious young prosecutor Merritt Lingard (Chloe Pirrie) on a ferry trip four years ago, they set about cracking it.
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Writer and director Scott Frank had been sitting on the rights to Jussi Adler-Olsen’s source Scandi-noir novels for over a decade.
Frank said at the renewal news: ‘I’m grateful to the folks at Netflix, as well as our shining cast and crew, for once more risking their careers to enable my folly.’
Goode also thanked Netflix in his statement, saying: ‘We have a wonderful cast and crew, headed by our resident genius Scott Frank. I cannot wait to read what comes from his magic quill!’
Frank said he was inspired by his love of crime dramas like Line of Duty to use the long-untouched rights after owning them for 15 years.
Metro’s thoughts on Dept Q
Senior TV Reporter Rebecca Cook shares her take on Netflix’s show…
Setting a dusty cold case file in front of a crack team of sleuths is definitely not reinventing the TV wheel. Making the detective in charge of said team the most disliked man in the police precinct is also nothing new.
But Dept Q is further proof that when it comes to bad-tempered, trauma-laden crime shows, the limit does not exist. This one benefits from a violently unhinged baddie, who it’s impossible to look away from.
The Slow Horses comparison is apt. They’re dud spies, these are dud coppers. Unfortunately, Dept Q doesn’t quite reach the levels of The Thick of It comedy found in Slough House, but the Department Q gang are a good hang nevertheless.
He admitted to Metro: ‘The books, you just knew that they could work that way. It took me a while to get to them.’
He added: ‘I thought this particular mystery and the situation and context for it was so interesting. I hadn’t seen that before.
‘But also the potential for these characters. I think they’re all really interesting and you could take them in so many different directions and go so far with them.
Dept Q is available to stream on Netflix.
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