Dept Q
While the Netflix Top 10 list may be mostly dominated by the likes of Ginny and Georgia and Sirens, one new show is sliding under the radar, even if it never landed a #1 spot.
That would be Dept. Q, the new British murder mystery series starring Matthew Goode as a traditionally reckless-but-brilliant cop tasked with solving cold cases. It may sound cliché, but it’s quite good, and has racked up an 84% critic score and a very high 94% audience score. Now, fans want answers about a season 2.
It’s not time to worry…yet. No, the show is not a miniseries which would discourage a season 2 ruling this out, and despite that, no, it has not been renewed yet. But Dept. Q only was released at the very end of May, and it hasn’t even been out two weeks yet. That’s not particularly long for Netflix, and we often see renewals a month or more after release if we’re not talking about blockbuster hits.
There are some updates here, namely what the cast thinks of all this. Here’s star Matthew Goode via Deadline:
“I’d wanted to work with Shirley Henderson—‘Shenderson’—for years. And Kelly McDonald, and then this fairly relatively new actress, Leah Byrne, who is a revelation in this show. It’s very difficult to be talking about some of the things that she has to talk about and make them hilarious. It’s quite a staggering… Well, it’s writing and talent, where they meet, I suppose. I love them all. That’s why we’re desperate to do a second season.”
And here’s actress Chloe Pirrie who plays Merritt Lingard to Cosmo:
“I think [a second season]
would be really great for the cast…And great for Scotland to have a show like this run again. It’s definitely something we would all want.”
Deadline said they believe there is “zero doubts” about a second season, and one point in the show’s favor is that it’s based on a series of books, and there are ten of them for a sprawling amount of source material.
I’m not going to go full Deadline here and say there are “zero” doubts that Dept. Q gets renewed for season 2, but I am leaning in an optimistic direction. Netflix loves crime series. There’s lots of source material to pull from. It has been well-received by critics and viewers. It has a stellar cast but not a wildly expensive one, and the same is true for being a grounded crime series rather than some huge blockbuster. All the signs are there that this is going to work out, but fans should be patient as for most Netflix series, this kind of thing doesn’t happen overnight.
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