What Do We Know About Dept Q Season 2?

It’s official: Netflix has renewed its hit Scottish cold case drama after season 1 spent six weeks in the streaming platform’s global top 10 chart. Lead star Matthew Goode is set to reprise his role as the ‘extremely abrasive and irascible’ DCI Carl Morck (in the actor’s words), joined by his team of misfits at Edinburgh police’s new cold case unit. Here’s everything we know so far about Dept Q season 2.

Matthew Goode as DCI Carl Morck in Dept Q. (© Justin Downing/Netflix)

Dept Q Season 2: Plot, Cast, Release Date & More

Based on Danish author Jussi Adler-Olsen’s Copenhagen-set Department Q novels, there is plenty of content to mine when it comes to Netflix’s adaptation. An idea two decades in the works of writer-director Scott Frank’s mind, the action is transposed to Edinburgh for this English-language version. And with the author himself giving Frank the greenlight, it always seemed like a second season was on the cards (and perhaps even more than that…).

When we asked lead star Matthew Goode about the possibility of a second season at the start of summer, he joked the answer was ‘above my pay grade!’.

‘I think it takes about a month for Netflix to collate the figures, but [Dept Q] has got a lot going for it,’ Goode added. ‘There are 10 books to mine more stories from for Department Q, so we’ve all got our fingers crossed. [Director Scott Frank] wants to do it. I’m desperate to do it, and all the rest of the cast are as well, because we had such a good time. But one can’t count one’s chickens.’

Flash forward to mid August, and Netflix has done exactly what Goode predicted: collated the numbers, gathered the stars, and renewed the hit drama. Produced by Left Bank Pictures (the creators of long-running dramas like Outlander and The Crown), we’re also told Dept Q season 2 will again be filmed in Edinburgh following the success of season 1.

‘I’m grateful to the folks at Netflix, as well as our shining cast and crew, for once more risking their careers to enable my folly,’ Frank says, with Goode adding ‘I cannot wait to read what comes from [Scott Frank’s] magic quill!’

Matthew Goode as DCI Carl Morck in Dept Q. (© Netflix)

What Will Happen?

No word just yet on the plot of Dept Q season 2 – even internally. One of the series’ executive producers Rob Bullock says the team at Left Bank Pictures ‘nervously await what Scott has in store for his alter-ego Carl Morck, and the other enabling members of team do-lally.’

‘We salute Netflix’s courage to let them loose once again,’ he joked.

That said, since season 1 was based on Adler-Olsen’s first Department Q novel The Keeper of Lost Causes (2007), we think it’s safe to assume Dept Q season 2 may well adapt the action of another novel. As Goode points out, ‘there are 10 books to mine more stories from,’ with an eleventh instalment published in Danish earlier this year.

Adler-Olsen’s second novel in the series, The Absent One (2008), opens with Morck being satisfied with his job on the cold case desk – a twist neither Morck nor his peers expected. So when another long-cold lead lands on his desk, Morck is instantly intrigued. This time we flash back two decades, when a brother and sister were brutally murdered. Part of a ring of privileged boarding school students, a suspect confessed and was convicted at the time – but when Morck digs a little deeper, all is not as it seems.

‘We are raring to return to Carl Morck and his band of glorious misfits at Dept Q,’ say Netflix execs Mona Qureshi and Manda Levin on behalf of the streaming platform. ‘Scott Frank brought us best-in-class storytelling and thrilled Netflix audiences worldwide [with season 1]. We can’t wait to see what Morck and the gang uncover in season 2… Edinburgh, we’re back.’

Leah Byrne as Rose in Dept Q. (© Jamie Simpson/Netflix)

The Cast

Matthew Goode will return to his leading role as DCI Carl Morck, along with his team of misfits: Alexej Manvelov as Akram, Leah Byrne as Rose and Jamie Sives as Hardy.

No news just yet on who will join them, but with a new case to investigate, we imagine a whole host of new faces will appear in Dept Q season 2. This means Chloe Pirrie, Patrick Kennedy and Mark Bonnar probably won’t return, all having played key roles in season 1’s cold case looking into missing prosecutor Merritt Lingard (Pirrie). However, other supporting characters like Morck’s commanding officer Chief Superintendent Moira Jacobson (Kate Dickie) and Morck’s therapist Dr Rachel Irving (Kelly Macdonald) may well return.

Speaking on season 1, Goode described the cast as ‘like having a Scottish actor bingo card,’ noting performances from Sives, Bonnar, Byrne, Dickie and Shirley Henderson. With season 2 once again set in Edinburgh, there is plenty of Scottish talent left to mine.

Chloe Pirrie as Merritt Lingard in Dept Q. (Netflix)

Release Date

No news just yet on when Dept Q season 2 will land on Netflix. Once season 1 filming was complete, it was less than a year before the series premiered. But with no news just yet on when filming might get underway, we’re anticipating Dept Q will be released in 2027.

All nine episodes of Dept Q are streaming on Netflix.