Dept. Q
If I'm honest the only reason Dept. Q came to my notice is because while promoting it Matthew Goode was talking about why he isn't in the final Downton Abbey movie, Downton Abbey: The Grand Finale. To save you the bother, it wasn't a big enough role and he likes jobs that challenge him, in other words how Mary married two men played by actors completely uninterested in the legacy of Downton is beyond me. But that meant I was mildly interested to see him in this role that would lure him away from a five minute Ascot cameo. And once I learned it was a Scottish police drama, with quite a few of my favorite Scots, I wanted to see if it was better than the recent effort to reboot Rebus. I can definitively say that it is better than Rebus, but there's an equally forgettable quality to the show. Could it be that Goode's character, Carl Morck, is so abrasive and angry that it's hard to watch him? Yes. But thankfully the other characters soften his edges just enough that by the end of the first season he's bearable. Could it be that Matthew Goode needs to eat a few good hearty meals because he's so skinny he looked like a famine victim? Yes. It was very disconcerting. Could it be that I didn't give a shit about the missing woman whose cold case they are investigating because she was unsympathetic and was played by an actress I didn't care for? Oh, most definitely. I only wanted the case to be solved so that Akram Salim, who chose the case because he believed it could be solved, would get vindication. In fact it's Akram Salim and the other Department Q subordinate, Rose Dickson, that carry the show. One with their quiet intelligence, the other with their quirky hair. Seriously, you can go down some serious rabbit holes on the internet about Rose's hair if you so have the mind. But as much as I love these characters, they are also problematic, and not just the fact that Rose's hair never moves, seriously, go down a rabbit hole, I dare you, it's that Akram Salim, with his outsider status, not actually being a police officer but having been one in Syria before he left for the safety and education of his daughters, is the one used to work outside the system. This means using extrajudicial force. AKA he beats the shit out of people. And while it's used as a way for Carl to underestimate Akram and almost as a cathartic comedic action to relieve the tension of the constantly propulsive plot I have issues with it. They are using a Middle Eastern character to be the enforcer, and this just smacks of racial profiling. Yes he's calm and collected and a family man, but by forcing him to be the muscle they are diminishing him. Seeing as this show is getting a second season I can only hope they will address this. Because Akram and the rest of the supporting cast are what makes this show work. In fact, do we really even need Matthew Goode? Because the book The Keeper of Lost Causes was first adapted as a film for Denmark and starred Nikolaj Lie Kaas as Carl. And if you've seen Britannia, you know that Nikolaj can out act Matthew Goode any day. Damn, what I wouldn't give to just combine that film series and this television series into the ultimate Department Q series!
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