A Crime Thriller Series From The Creator Of The Queen's Gambit Is Taking Over Netflix

Everyone loves a good crime thriller, and there's a new one racing up the Netflix top 10 from the creator of the hit 2020 limited series "The Queen's Gambit." Scott Frank co-created the wildly popular chess drama with Allan Scott (who owned the rights to the eponymous book on which the show was based), and now he's delivered the Scotland-set crime procedural "Dept. Q," and fans are eating it up. "The Queen's Gambit" broke viewership records for the streamer, so it looks like anything Frank brings to Netflix is almost guaranteed to be a hit, even if the projects are wildly different from one another. 

Frank co-created "Dept. Q" with Chandni Lakhani, based on the "Department Q" book series by Danish writer Jussi Adler-Olsen. The series stars Matthew Goode as fallen detective Carl Morck, who is tasked with putting together a cold case team in the basement of an Edinburgh office. Morck has been through it and is a Sherlock Holmes-type, a misanthrope who is nonetheless brilliant at what he does. But following a crumbling marriage and botched investigation where he ended up shot and his partner paralyzed, the last thing he really wants to do is run the new cold case unit. As is usually the case, that means he's the perfect man for the job. 

The team that Morck assembles is mostly made up of fellow outcasts and misfits in the crime-solving world, including Syrian detective Akram Salim (Alexej Manvelov), who starts working at the precinct, and Rose (Leah Byrne), who is trying to prove herself after she was pulled off active duty in the wake of a tragedy. Morck's former partner, James (Jamie Sives), is also around and helps consult on Morck's cases, and Morck is required to check in with Dr. Rachel Irving (the always-great Kelly Macdonald), a police therapist who's helping him navigate things after the shooting. 

There are plenty of police procedurals out there, even within the subgenre of "brilliant but misanthropic genius solves crimes," but "Dept. Q" seems to be doing something a bit different by putting together a team of misfit crime-solvers working with that misanthrope. Not only that, but Matthew Goode is an incredibly talented performer who brings intense energy to his roles no matter what they are — whether he's playing real-life legends like studio mogul Robert Evans in "The Offer" or the big bad vampire daddy in "Abigail." The killer supporting cast and Goode's goodness at the center makes "Dept. Q" more than your average procedural, which is very good news for Netflix.