Summary
Dept. Q has several of the right ingredients, but its similarities to Slow Horses and an overlong season both conspire to undermine it.
The comparison to Slow Horses is unavoidable and unfortunately does Netflix’s Dept. Q no favours. An adaptation from Scott Frank (The Queen’s Gambit) of the same-named novels by Danish author Jussi Adler-Olsen, this should be good. Correction: It is good. But the familiarity of the basement-dwelling premise mandates a caveat, which is that it’s not quite as good as the show on a rival platform it most closely resembles.
This is for a multitude of reasons, but I think the biggest one might be length. Dept. Q runs for nine episodes, all of them touching an hour and a few even exceeding that runtime, and it’s just altogether too much. The knock-on effects are considerable. I’m reminded of that old Roger Ebert quote about how no good movie is too long and no bad movie is short enough. It doesn’t quite hold true here, since Dept. Q is both good and too long, which is a strange position to be in.
But here we are. With so much time to fill, this is a show that is forced to artificially extend its core mystery, reiterate the same points multiple times, stretch out character revelations to where we don’t care anymore – or have figured them out on our own – and indulge in small scenes and interactions that eventually reveal that the depth and searing wit of Slow Horses just aren’t here. It’s a shame. With a tight six-episode first season, this would have been renewed in an instant. It still might be, of course, but I bet the conversation is a little more complicated than it might have otherwise been.
It’s the basement thing. Slough House isn’t a literal basement, to be fair, but it works as one in principle; the place where brilliant losers who have committed career suicide in one way or another are consigned, out of sight and out of mind. Matthew Goode’s DCI Carl Morck (The Offer, The House, The Imitation Game) fits the Jackson Lamb bill, albeit without the flatulence – he’s a brilliant copper who’s just too haunted and acerbic to play with others. After a shooting that leaves his partner paralyzed and a uniformed officer dead, Morck becomes even less of a team player than ever, so his superior, Moira (Kate Dickie, Boat Story, Matriarch), shuffles him off to an office in the basement to set up the titular Department Q, with a remit to re-examine cold cases.
Alexej Manvelov in Dept. Q | Image via Netflix
Department Q is little more than a way to keep Morck occupied and rehabilitate the public image of a failing, underfunded police department, and Morck knows this, so he doesn’t take his mandate especially seriously. However, the presence of his new lackey, Akram Salim (Alexej Manvelov, Tom Clancy’s Jack Ryan, A Day and a Half), kicks him into gear, and they open a cold case concerning the sudden and unexplained disappearance of ruthless prosecutor Merritt Lingard (Chloe Pirrie, Carnival Row). Before long, the investigation attracts Rose (Leah Byrne), an eccentric and troubled officer who begins to find her purpose in the new unit.
If there’s a reason to watch this show, it’s Akram. He’s a superb character played at a remarkably even keel by Manvelov, and his unflappable demeanour pulls double duty as the source of the best comedy but also the most earnest sentiment. Akram’s investigative chops and blasé approach to violence immediately appeal to Morck, who rightly assumes that his supposed background as an everyday policeman in Syria is underselling what he really got up to (a mystery which lasts for the entire season). Rose also really grows into the show as more of her backstory is revealed, and these two characters in tandem help to provide a lot of likeable humanity that is deliberately missing from Morck.
Morck’s fine, don’t get me wrong, but the demands on his character to be unpleasant to virtually everyone that he meets can sometimes make him grating. He shows a softer side with his mandated police therapist, Dr. Rachel Irving (Kelly Macdonald, Skeleton Crew, I Came By, Operation Mincemeat), but mostly because he fancies her, and has an interesting relationship with his stepson, Jasper, who lives with him despite the breakdown of his marriage because Morck somehow provides more stability than his mother does. Morck’s wracked by guilt over what happened to his partner and takes a shine to both Akram and Rose, but it’s really those two who compel him to examine his own personality and behaviour rather than him inspiring much in return. It’s difficult to strike the right balance with a character like this because the entire point is that he’s not supposed to be likeable, but there isn’t a great deal of depth underpinning that beyond garden-variety guilt.
This is perhaps why the Slow Horses comparison is an unfair one. Dept. Q simply doesn’t have the same calibre of writing, and certainly not the same expert plotting, which causes the middle chapters to really sag. How many viewers actually complete a series seems to be an important metric for Netflix, and that’s where I suspect this series could struggle. The attention-grabbing cast and association with well-liked Nordic noir will attract eyeballs, but keeping them engaged for the long haul is another matter entirely. If I weren’t professionally obligated to push through for the sake of this review, I’d have likely tapped out midway, and Dept. Q would have become one of those shows that is perfectly fine, but that you never quite get around to finishing. I hope that doesn’t become its legacy, since it’s worth persevering with until the end, but I won’t be entirely surprised if it does.
RELATED:
