Why Does Merritt From Netflix's Hit ‘Dept. Q' Look So Familiar?

Forbes

11-06-2025

Chloe Pirrie in "Dept Q."
Dept. Q, a new hit Netflix cold case crime drama, stars Chloe Pirrie in the pivotal role of Merritt Lingard. What else has Pirrie starred in?
Dept. Q debuted on Netflix on May 31 and in its first full week on the streamer's Global Top 10 TV Shows charts from June 2-8 had 8.9 million views, which equates to 73.4 million viewing hours for a No. 2 finish ahead of the hit comedy Sirens at No. 3 and behind the drama Ginny & Georgia Season 3 at No. 1.
The logline for Dept. Q, which is set in Scotland, reads, 'A brash but brilliant cop becomes head of a new police department, where he leads an unlikely team of misfits in solving Edinburgh's cold cases.'
Matthew Goode stars as Detective Chief Inspector Carl Morck, who is assigned the head of the new cold case department. Tasked with selecting one case to kick off the department's endeavors, Morck and his assistant, Akram Salim (Alexej Manvelov) reopen the missing persons case of an ambitious prosecutor, Merrit, who mysteriously vanished without a trace four years before.
Born Aug. 25, 1987, in Edinburgh, Pirrie's screen career kicked off in 2010 with a guest role in an episode of the BBC series Doctors. In 2014, Pirrie landed a role as a regular on the BBC miniseries drama The Game, which was followed by a supporting roles in the Lifetime miniseries War & Peace, the BBC America series The Living and the Dead and the ITV series Brief Encounters.
In addition to her supporting roles in Netflix's The Crown in 2017, BBC One miniseries The Victim and BBC series Temple — both in 2019 — and Prime Video's Carnival Row in 2019 and 2023, Pirrie has starred in such films as 2020's Emma and Kindred.
In between Pirrie's already impressive list of credits, the actor has appeared in other projects that make her feel familiar to the audiences of Dept. Q.
Chloe Pirrie in "The Waldo Moment" in "Black Mirror."
One of Chloe Pirrie's earliest screen roles in the Black Mirror episode The Waldo Momeent in Season 2, Episode 3 of the Netflix sci-fi anthology series in 2013.
Pirrie plays Gwendolyn Harris, a candidate for British Parliment who gets involved with Jamie Salter (Daniel Rigby), a disheartened comedian who does the voice and movements for animated bear named Waldo — who is also running for office.
Chloe Pirrie and Annabeth Kelly in "The Queen's Gambit."
Chloe Pirrie stars Alice Harmon, the mother of eventual chess prodigy Beth Harmon (Anya Taylor-Joy) in the hit Netflix series The Queen's Gambit.
A math genius who is struggling with mental health issues, Alice Harmon only appears in flashback scenes in the The Queen's Gambit.
Ray Liotta and Chloe Pirrie in "Hanna."
Chloe Pirrie stars in the recurring role of Brianna Stapleton, an operative for the Pioneer Group in the third and final season of the Prime Video series Hanna.
The sci-fi action series stars Esme Creed-Miles in the title role of a young girl whose DNA is enhanced as part of the UTRAX program, which creates children super soldiers. Stapleton works closely with Gordon Evans, aka The Chairman (Ray Liotta), of the Pioneer Group, which has close ties with UTRAX.
Chloe Pirrie in "Under the Banner of Heaven."
Chloe Pirrie plays Matilda Lafferty in Under the Banner of Heaven, 2022 FX true crime-inspired drama surrounding the murder of Brenda Lafferty (Daisy Edgar-Jones) and her young daughter in a Morman community in Utah.
The series also stars Andrew Garfield as Detective Jeb Pyre, who investigates the murders. Matilda Lafferty is the sheltered and frightened wife of Dan Lafferty (Wyatt Russell), a fundamentalist Morman who along with his brother, Ron (Sam Worthington), are convicted of the murders.
All nine episodes of Dept. Q, starring Matthew Goode, Chloe Pirrie, Kelly Macdonald, Alexej Manvelov, Leah Byrne, Jamie Sives and Katie Dickie are streaming on Netflix.