Dept. Q fans can breathe a sigh of relief: Netflix is officially bringing the series back for a second season!
The Edinburgh-set drama, led by Matthew Goode as Detective Chief Inspector Carl Morck, became one of the streamer’s standout new shows when its first season dropped on May 29.
With a strong reception — 88% on Rotten Tomatoes — and six weeks in Netflix’s global Top 10, a renewal always felt likely. Still, with the way streaming has gone lately, every week without an announcement brings a little unease. So many shows get cut short these days that it seems rare for another chapter to feel guaranteed, no matter how strong the numbers look.
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Cast and production
Goode returns as Morck, alongside Alexej Manvelov (Akram), Leah Byrne (Rose), and Jamie Sives (Hardy). Production will once again take place in Edinburgh, whose granite mood and alleyway shadows did half the detective work in season 1. Creator Scott Frank (The Queen’s Gambit) is back in charge.
In a statement to Netflix site Tudum, Goode said: “I’d like to thank Netflix for giving us the opportunity to further investigate Dept. Q’s storylines. We have a wonderful cast and crew, headed by our resident genius Scott Frank. I cannot wait to read what comes from his magic quill!”
Netflix executives Mona Qureshi and Manda Levin added: “We are raring to return to Carl Morck and his band of glorious misfits at Dept. Q. Scott Frank brought us best-in-class storytelling and thrilled Netflix audiences worldwide. We can’t wait to see what Morck and the gang uncover in Season 2 … Edinburgh, we’re back.”
From page to screen
Season 1 adapted The Keeper of Lost Causes, the first of Jussi Adler-Olsen’s Dept. Q novels. The property’s track record is solid: there’s also an ongoing run of Danish film adaptations — six releases so far — proving there’s plenty of casework to mine. Netflix’s series gives it a Scottish spin, leaning into gallows humour, bruised character dynamics, and the kind of cold cases that never really stay cold.
The numbers behind the renewal
As reported by TVLine, Dept. Q entered Nielsen’s U.S. streaming originals chart at No. 3 in its first week with 749 million minutes viewed — 76% of that audience over the age of 50. It climbed to No. 2 the following week with 1.1 billion minutes across its nine episodes, and stayed in the Top 10 for a further two weeks (No. 5, then No. 6).
The second novel for season 2?
Netflix hasn’t announced which novel season 2 will tackle. That being said, if the series keeps to the book order, the next adaptation would be The Absent One. That particular book finds Morck settled into Department Q and taking on a brutal 20-year-old double murder of a brother and sister. One suspect confessed and is serving time, but Morck suspects that’s only half the truth. His trail leads to Kimmie, a homeless woman carrying dangerous secrets tied to powerful people — and the race is on to find her before they do.
Official plot details are still under wraps, but the blueprint is clear: more long-buried cases, more frayed tempers in a cramped basement office, and more of Edinburgh’s darker corners. With Frank’s “magic quill” back at work and a cast comfortable in the show’s bleak-funny groove, season 2 looks set to dig deeper without losing the grit.
