Adding a pop of cartoonish colour to the dept.’s dreary HQ is Leah Byrne’s Rose, a young detective consigned to deskwork after a traumatic incident sent her spiralling. The bright, chatty daughter of a former detective, Rose adds likeability and humour, while Akram’s elliptical past sustains a portion of Dept. Q’s intrigue.
Joining them in the supporting cast is an embarrassment of acting greats including Kelly Macdonald, Mark Bonnar, Shirley Henderson, Jamie Sives, Clive Russell, Stuart Bowman and Kate Dickie. There’s so much Scottish talent in this Edinburgh-set story (transposed by US showrunner Scott Frank from Copenhagen in Danish writer Jussi Adler-Olsen’s original books – already turned into a popular film series in Denmark) that it almost makes up for the fact that Morck is English, another factor that doesn’t endear him to the locals.
Once Department Q has unstacked its furniture from its Edinburgh station’s disused urinals and shower cubicles, it takes on its first case (there are Adler-Olsen 10 books, and this first series tackles only the first). Four years ago, a woman went missing, and was suspected to have taken her own life. Instinct, old-fashioned gumshoeing and Morck’s trust-nobody approach take the gang on a journey to a remote Scottish island, and to a conspiracy that (possibly) goes all the way to the top.
Meanwhile, there’s a parallel story about a young and ambitious prosecutor, played very well by Chloe Pirrie, an investigation into the shooting that landed James Sives’ DS Hardy in a hospital bed without the use of his legs, and we sit in on Morck’s flirt-fight sessions with Kelly Macdonald‘s police therapist Dr Rachel Irving – another strong supporting performance.
The split narrative plays with chronology and gives us a couple of routes into the case but mostly, this is a straightforward procedural, with the expected parade of suspicious higher-ups, red herrings, twists and binge-watch-appropriate cliffhangers. It’s all very familiar territory, from the traumatised lead to his oddball sidekicks, to the nasty revelation of what befell our missing person.
A sense of mordant humour doesn’t exactly set the show apart, but at least sets it a short distance away from the least imaginative versions of stories like these. Morck’s wife isn’t dead, for instance. He doesn’t spend his nights at home drinking bourbon and playing old home movies, but arguing with a sullen teen, and with his batty lodger – a perpetual mature student played by comedian Sanjeev Kholi.
