Cliff Notes – "Line of Duty was on my mind when creating Netflix’s latest thriller"
- Scott Frank, known for The Queen’s Gambit, draws inspiration from British crime dramas, particularly Line of Duty, for his new series Dept Q.
- The show features detective Carl Morck, who, alongside fellow misfits, tackles a long-unsolved cold case after a traumatic incident in the opening scene.
Line of Duty was on my mind when creating Netflix’s latest thriller
Writer and director Scott Frank has said he ‘loves’ Line of Duty (Picture: BBC/World Productions)
Netflix has a new mystery waiting to unfurl on your screens today, which will be perfect for those hankering after a slice of Line of Duty.
Scott Frank, the writer and director behind Netflix’s runaway chess hit The Queen’s Gambit (an unlikely combination of words), is back on the streamer with the twisty crime thriller Dept Q.
The new nine-part show dives in at the deep end with a shooting in the first scene that leaves one copper dead, our protagonist detective Carl Morck (Matthew Goode) traumatised and his partner paralysed.
Speaking to Metro, Frank explained how certain British TV thrillers played a huge part in his inspiration for the show, which has dropped all nine of its episodes to binge in one go today.
Following the events of the opening scene, Morck is still adjusting to his new normal months later, when his superior exiles him to a newly established department – the name’s in the title – down in the basement.
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He’s joined by a couple of fellow police misfits and tasked with cracking a long-unsolved cold case.
Based on a series of Scandi-noir novels by Jussi Adler-Olsen, the show’s creator Frank, 65, said he’d been sitting on the book rights and waiting to make the show for 15 years.
It was his love of crime dramas, ‘especially’ the British variety, that he said finally got him doing something outside his wheelhouse with this show.
He told Metro: ‘I just love these kinds of shows myself anyway. They’re my guilty pleasure, not even guilty, my pleasure to watch.
‘I hadn’t really made anything like this before, and so it seemed like a really, really fun idea.’
Goode stars as the prickly detective Carl Morck (Picture: Justin Downing/Netflix)
The show is based on a series of Scandi-noir novels by Jussi Adler-Olsen (Picture: AP/Netflix)
When asked which crime dramas he had in mind when making the show, Frank had a laundry list: Broadchurch, Happy Valley, Prime Suspect, Cracker, as well as Line of Duty.
‘I love Line of Duty, just because of the way it moves and the way it keeps turning,’ Frank said.
‘You have these 20-minute interrogation scenes that are like plays. I just love that.’
Frank hopes that viewers tuning in to Dept Q take away ‘a full meal’ from the show. He said: ‘I hope they have a good time and they get lost in it the way I like to get lost in these shows where you’re pulled along and second guessing, but the character reveals are so satisfying.’
Scott Frank wrote Netflix’s smash hit The Queen’s Gambit (Picture: AP)
He only has one small plea to TV viewers: don’t watch the show on your phone.
‘I don’t know how they do it,’ he said. ‘I feel terrible for the filmmakers, because they’re watching Outlander on their cell phone.
‘Even my own wife sometimes will be watching, and she’ll look down to do something, and then she’ll look up and she’ll have missed a key plot point.
‘I don’t know how to control that. I only know how to write a good story and then just hope that enough people realise that it’s one they should probably lean in for.’
And if he does happen to see you watching Dept Q on the tube? ‘I would be both mortified and resigned at the same time,’ he laughs.
Frank hopes Dept Q will be a ‘full meal’ for viewers (Picture: Jamie Simpson/Netflix)
Matthew Goode, 47, told Metro he didn’t think Frank would choose him for the role of Morck, but Frank said he wrote the scripts with Goode specifically in mind.
Goode said: ‘I was thinking he can pretty have whoever he wants. Why question him? He’s one of the most intelligent men around. So he came back and he said, ‘I think I’d really like you to do it’.
‘It’s just such brilliant, nuanced characters. It’s dark, it’s hilarious. And that’s something you don’t necessarily always see within this genre. I just wanted more scripts. I wanted to know where it was going.
‘So I felt very, very, very lucky and delighted, because it’s the second time that Scott has given me a role that I don’t think many other directors would necessarily have thought of me for.’
Dept Q is available to stream on Netflix.
