The crime thriller from the creator of 'The Queen's Gambit' is a hit on Netflix.

BarcelonaA surly but brilliant and persevering policeman. This is one of the great tropes of detective fiction that, despite having been overused, still works. A new example of this is the series Dept. Q, recently released on Netflix and already ranked among the platform's most-watched series. The production comes with the endorsement of being a project from the creator of the super hit Queen's Gambit, Scott Frank, and have a very solvent cast headed by Matthew Goode, with a career in television that goes from Downton Abbey, in The Good Wife and The Crown.

Dept. Q is one Nordic Noir passed through a Scottish filter, which makes comparisons with others inevitable thrillers police and detective stories such as Line of Duty either ShetlandThe series adapts a saga of ten novels by Danish writer Jussi Adler-Olsen, which has already been adapted into a television film in Denmark. In the Netflix version, set in Edinburgh, Matthew Goode plays Carl Morck, an English police officer living in Scotland who returns to work after a long leave following a shooting. Not only was he injured, but his partner and best friend was paralyzed, and a young officer died, two events for which he feels guilty.

Morck is boastful and unpleasant to his colleagues. To avoid trouble, his boss assigns him to lead a new unit that is to investigate old unsolved cases and banishes him to the basement of the police station. Amid rusty urinals, dust, and damp, Morck and his assistants—a Syrian refugee with hidden wounds and a young police officer also suffering from a fair amount of trauma—begin to unravel the disappearance of Merritt Lingard, a young and ambitious prosecutor who was presumed dead, even though she was never found out. As they progress in this twisted and gruesome case, the relationship between the team members grows closer, one of the most interesting aspects of the series.

Aside from living with his classmates, Morck must also learn to get along with his teenage stepson, whom he has custody of at the request of his ex-wife and the boy's mother, and with the psychiatrist he is required to visit regularly by order of his superiors.

A character conceived for Matthew Goode

Scott Frank, who has written or co-written all nine episodes of the series and directed six, confesses that he always thought of Matthew Goode to play the lead role because they had already worked together on the film. The Lookout (2007). "I'm sure the people at Netflix wanted a bigger 'name' as the cost of the series would have been high for their British division," Frank explains to Vanity Fair. "But when I pointed out the variety of roles Matthew had played, and the fact that these days it's more often than not the show that makes the star, not the other way around, they gave it a thumbs up and then expressed nothing but great enthusiasm for his performance," he adds. Goode admits that he's aware that he may not have been a household name and that, despite his long career, he's always kept a low profile. "Frank had to fight for me to make sure that, let's face it, I'm no Tom Hardy or Zendaya," he says.

Goode, as well as the rest of the cast of Dept. Q, said he's open to more seasons, a more than likely possibility considering Adler-Olsen has written ten books about Morck's cases. "There are still many mysteries about many of the characters. Hopefully, this is a sign that there will be more seasons," he added.