Dept. Q: Matthew Goode is a cantankerous detective in first look images from Scott Frank's new Netflix series (2025)

Between 2007 and 2021, Danish author Jussi Adler-Olsen wrote ten novels in his noir crime series Department Q. Those stories have served as the basis for multiple Danish thriller films over the years, with more to come – and now, Netflix has shared a batch of first look images that give a preview of their upcoming 9-episode series Dept. Q, which stars Matthew Goode and changes the setting from Copenhagen, Denmark to Edinburgh, Scotland. Along with the unveiling of the images comes the announcement that Dept. Q is scheduled to premiere on May 29th.

Written and directed by Scott Frank, who previously created The Queen’s Gambit and Godless for Netflix, Dept. Q has the following synopsis: DCI Carl Morck is a brilliant cop but a terrible colleague. His razor-sharp sarcasm has made him no friends in Edinburgh police. 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.

Matthew Goode (The King’s Man) plays Detective Chief Inspector Carl Morck and is joined in the cast by Chloe Pirrie (An Inspector Calls) as Merritt Lingard, Jamie Sives (Annika) as Detective Chief Inspector James Hardy, Mark Bonnar (Operation Mincemeat) as Stephen Burns, Alexej Manvelov (Tom Clancy’s Jack Ryan) as Akram Salim, Leah Byrne (The Last Bus) as Detective Constable Rose Dickson, Kate Dickie (Game of Thrones) as Detective Chief Superintendent Moira Jacobson, Shirley Henderson (Bridget Jones’s Diary) as Claire Marsh, Kelly Macdonald (No Country for Old Men) as Dr. Rachel Irving, and Tom Bulpett (Father Brown) as William Lingard.

Speaking with Tudum, Frank revealed that he had been pondering an adaptation of Adler-Olsen’s works for several years. “There was just something about it. The title, this notion of something called Department Q, stayed with me. And so I met with the author while I was shooting (the 2014 film) A Walk Among the Tombstones in New York, and I’d actually had the books for a couple of years by then. He said, ‘I trust you’ and that he’d always hoped I would end up writing and directing it.” As Tudum notes, Adler-Olsen has now gotten his wish, as Frank wrote or co-wrote all nine episodes of Dept. Q, and directed six.

Are you interested in Dept. Q? Check out the first look images, then let us know by leaving a comment below.