Dept. Q

Scott Frank's Dept. Q launched on Netflix in May 2025 across nine episodes, the writer-director's first long-form return after his Emmy-winning The Queen's Gambit (2020). The series is a Left Bank Pictures production for Netflix and is adapted from Jussi Adler-Olsen's bestselling Danish Department Q novels, a series that previously yielded a run of Danish-language feature films starting with The Keeper of Lost Causes in 2013. Frank relocates the action wholesale from Copenhagen to Edinburgh, with co-creator Chandni Lakhani and a Scottish writers' room.

Matthew Goode (The Crown, A Discovery of Witches) leads as DCI Carl Morck, with Chloe Pirrie (The Queen's Gambit) as the missing prosecutor Merritt Lingard, Alexej Manvelov (Top Dog) as Akram Salim, and Leah Byrne as junior officer Rose Dickson. Kelly Macdonald, Kate Dickie, Mark Bonnar, Jamie Sives and Shirley Henderson round out a deliberately Scottish-heavy supporting cast. Cinematography is by Pål Ulvik Rokseth (The Northman); the score is by Carlos Rafael Rivera, Frank's longtime collaborator.

Reviews on launch were strongly positive (The Telegraph, The Guardian and Empire placed it among the best new crime series of 2025) and the show entered Netflix's global top ten in over twenty markets in its first week. A second instalment was confirmed shortly after launch.