Scots noir is sharp, witty and a wee bit SNP. What would Taggart say?

The Herald Scotland

29-05-2025

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HEAVEN knows what DCI Taggart would have made of the police officers in Netflix's new crime drama.
With their edgy haircuts, vintage duds, and impossibly youthful looks, they look like escapees from a hipster magazine fashion shoot rather than cops. 'Only in Edinburgh,' Maryhill's finest would likely growl before tearing back to Glasgow.
Dept Q has Edinburgh and Scotland running right through it, which is a neat trick given it is based on a series of Copenhagen-set novels by Danish writer Jussi Adler-Olsen. Netflix was also reportedly considering Boston for the location, but Edinburgh got the gig. Smart choice.
Ditto the casting of Matthew Goode as DCI Carl Morck. On the face of it, Morck is just another grumpy maverick, but Goode adds charm and vulnerability to the mix when the occasion demands.
As for the rest of the cast, almost every cool Scottish actor you can think of has received call-up papers, including Kelly Macdonald (No Country for Old Men), Mark Bonnar and Jamie Sives (Guilt), Kate Dickie (Red Road), Chloe Pirrie (Shell), Shirley Henderson (Bridget Jones - and that's just in the first three (of nine) episodes.
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The tale opens with Morck back at work after a long spell off. A seemingly routine shout he and his partner (Ives) attended went catastrophically wrong, leaving Morck to pick up what is left of his career.
His boss (Kate Dickie) sends Morck off to a new cold case unit, Dept Q. Holed up in a basement office among the broken desks and chairs, it looks like Morck is heading for the skip, too.
Then he comes across the case of a missing lawyer (Chloe Pirrie) and is intrigued. If he can find out what happened to the advocate, mend relations with his troubled son, and convince his therapist (Kelly Mac) he's not such an arrogant so-and-so after all, things might just be okay again.
After a cracking start the pace slows, and for long stretches little seems to be happening. There's some funny business going on with the timeline, and now and then the dialogue turns clunky, as if something has been lost in translation. And while we are at it, who ordered another maverick detective?
A little classiness goes a long way in smoothing over such faults, and this adaptation by Scott Frank (The Queen's Gambit) has it to spare. Edinburgh, washed in blues and greys, looks moody and magnificent. The cast spark off each other as if they've worked together for most of their careers (as some probably have).
Best of all, the writers have gone their own, defiantly Scottish, way with the material. The bleak outlook, the barbed humour, the slagging of Morck for being English - it's all here and funny with it. Is this the first attempt at nationalist noir we see before us?
Dept Q is too savvy for that, but it has its moments when anything seems possible, and that's entertaining enough for now.