Department Q
Netflix
Transplant of the Jussi Adler-Olsen series of books into Scotland, leaving the main character names unchanged which has a slight dissonance at times but does improve the fidelity of the adaptation. Moaning Mrtyle / Bridget Jones pal Shirley Henderson has a role as a carer and despite being only a year or so younger than me looks little changed from her stint in the second floor girls bathroom.
Will watch with interest to see where this goes.
(Later…)
Well, that got pretty exciting at the end, they did ramp the tension quite nicely. There was rather too much violence and unnecessary gore for my taste, I don’t think it really needed to be quite so graphic (but that’s what you get for translating Scandi Noir over to the UK). I think I understand what happened back in the past with Lyle and Harry, but I’m still not totally clear on why Lyle then did what he did to “Sam Haig“. So perhaps for as in the audience who didn’t follow it completely there needed to be a little bit more exposition at the end but other than that, this really held my attention and I did enjoy it.
The story involves a number of unrelated threads, an initial shooting in which our main protagonist is shot through the throat; the cold case disappearance of a prosecutor four years ago; and possible malfeasance in the conduct of the final case that she was involved in. Other crimes come to light as we go along and things that originally seem to be connected turn out to be independent so there are plenty of nice twist and turns which the format of a limited series allows to develop slowly and fully.
Matthew Goode’s character I initially found a bit annoying, did he really have to be such a dick all of the time? But after awhile I did warm to him and there was enough humour in his interactions to humanise him. The supporting characters, Rose and Akram were excellent and really lifted the show, indeed the casting and acting throughout was all good.
This richly deserves a second outing and it was both nice (and plausible) to leave unsolved the initial shooting so that we’ve got something to hang onto next time around. It was also a clever plot device of the original author to put pressure on the Lord Advocate to properly fund the Department and therefore create the ongoing storyline.
Well done to all concerned, just hold back on the buckets of blood for the next one.