"Dept. Q" Trailer: Matthew Goode Stars as a Troubled Detective Solving Cold Cases in Netflix's Neo-Noir Series from the Writer-Director of The Queen's Gambit

Goode plays a tormented detective solving unsolved mysteries while confronting his painful past in this new Netflix miniseries from Scott Frank.

Here’s something not a lot of people know: The Queen’s Gambit, the Netflix miniseries phenomenon that came out in 2020 and sparked a resurgence in the game of chess during the pandemic, was originally a film project that was set to be directed by actor Heath Ledger. As a highly rated chess player and chess fanatic himself, Ledger was gearing up to turn Walter Tevis's The Queen’s Gambit novel into his directorial debut. But Ledger’s tragic and untimely death prevented that film from being made. Fast forward 12 years after Ledger’s death, and Oscar-nominated screenwriter/filmmaker Scott Frank (Out of Sight, Logan) adapted Tevis’s novel into a highly viewed miniseries, one of Netflix’s biggest hits, and the rest is history.

Even before the success of The Queen’s Gambit, Scott Frank was considered a highly sought-after screenwriter, having penned such hits as Steven Soderbergh’s Out of Sight, Steven Spielberg’s Minority Report, and James Mangold’s comic book movies The Wolverine and Logan. Frank has always demonstrated a strong knack for adapting source material, bringing a depth to every project he touches.

Frank, a director in his own right having written and directed The Queen’s Gambit, his western miniseries Godless (an underappreciated, yet Emmy-winning Netflix original), and the Liam Neeson-starring thriller A Walk Among the Tombstones, has also proven quite exceptional with the detective genre, adding a certain level of sophistication to the noir aesthetic.

If we can recommend one Scott Frank film, it’s his 2007 directorial debut The Lookout. It’s a tightly wound crime caper starring Joseph Gordon-Levitt, Matthew Goode, Isla Fisher, and Jeff Daniels. The film was criminally underrated and deserves more eyeballs.

The same could be said for Frank’s Monsieur Spade, his 2024 follow-up to The Queen’s Gambit, which may have fallen victim to the streaming dogpile. Originally a miniseries for AMC+ (a platform not many are subscribed to), it features an extraordinary performance from Clive Owen as hard-boiled detective Sam Spade. Not necessarily an adaptation of Dashiell Hammett’s classic crime novel, but a reimagining of Hammett’s perennial gumshoe character. Frank imagines an older, beaten-up Sam Spade, now retired in the South of France in the 1960s, where he finds himself tangled up in a local murder mystery. Owen plays the character to the hilt. It’s a must-watch for anyone who appreciates Owen or classic noir. The miniseries is now available to stream on both Prime Video and Netflix.

Alright, now let’s get to the matter at hand. Scott Frank’s newest miniseries, where he’s reuniting with Netflix, is a new neo-noir thriller that seems to have all the makings of another hit: cold cases yet to be solved and an emotionally scarred detective tasked with cracking them. This time, Frank is adapting the immensely popular Danish crime novel series by Jussi Adler-Olsen, Department Q, which was previously turned into a popular Danish film trilogy in the early 2010s.

For his forthcoming Netflix miniseries, Frank switches the books’ original Nordic setting to Scotland. He also reunites with Matthew Goode, having worked with him on The Lookout, as Goode takes on the lead role of Detective Carl Morck, a brilliant yet severely depressed English officer who is still haunted by the murder of his best friend.

Now, Carl is put in charge of a special police department designed specifically for cold cases, where he must confront his past while solving unsolved mysteries and providing closure for those who desperately need it.

Dept. Q also stars Kelly Macdonald (Boardwalk Empire, Trainspotting) as police therapist Dr. Rachel Irving. The cast also includes Chloe Pirrie, Alexej Manvelov, Leah Byrne, Mark Bonnar, and Jamie Sives, with Shirley Henderson and Kate Dickie rounding out the ensemble.

Frank wrote and directed all nine episodes of Dept. Q, which is set to premiere Thursday, May 29th, on Netflix.

Official 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.