Dept. Q is a gripping new crime thriller on Netflix, following the unraveling journey of Detective Chief Inspector Carl Morck. Matthew Goode delivers a career-defining performance as the raw, unpredictable Morck, bringing an intensity and vulnerability rarely seen on screen.
With a haunting mystery at its core and universally acclaimed acting, Dept. Q promises edge-of-your-seat drama and unforgettable characters. Here’s a peek into the show, analyzing Goode’s performance and tracking his career up to this point.
Insights: Lessons From Matthew Goode
- Embrace roles outside your typecast — taking bold risks can redefine your career and showcase new depths.
- Use physicality and visible scars (real or makeup) to embody trauma and character history authentically.
- Channel personal vulnerability and raw emotion, even if it means being unlikeable at first, to create a compelling, memorable performance.
The Snapshot: Dept. Q in a Nutshell
A brash and brilliant Edinburgh cop is tasked with running a new cold case squad that will come to consume his life.
(All episodes of Dept. Q are available for viewing on Netflix)
Matthew Goode’s Performance as Carl Morck in Dept. Q
Detective Chief Inspector Carl Morck was a talented cop on the rise before he and his partner were shot at a crime scene. Now, he’s sporting a nasty scar the size of a quarter on the left side of his neck, he’s dealing with a stepson with whom he can’t communicate, terrible anger issues, guilt about his partner being partially paralyzed, and all the other stuff that goes along with being shot and surviving.
When he’s selected to run a new cold case squad in the Edinburgh Police Department, he is initially resistant to the point of insubordination. His new assistant finds the file of a missing prosecuting attorney who seemed to completely disappear off a ferry four years earlier, and Morck is drawn into the investigation, slowly but surely finding his way back to being a real cop.
As played by Matthew Goode, Morck is a raw, exposed nerve. He wears a beard that is meant to camouflage his scar, even though the scar sits below it. He has lost weight to the point that he is all angry sinew, and he carries himself with a scowl that doesn’t just cover his face, it’s like the expression covers his whole body.
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Goode has made a name for himself playing cooler customers in his career, men who are more buttoned down. He has an innate intelligence that comes through in his roles, and if it’s possible to be typecast as the stiff-assed British man who is smarter than you are, Goode has found a way to do it.
This is why his performance as Morck in Dept. Q is so impressive. As the detective, he appears hollowed out. Ragged. On the edge, but not in the cliched way. It’s more that Morck doesn’t care anymore about his career, what people think or if crimes even get solved.
This becomes enormously freeing for both the character and the actor portraying him. After so many years playing more uptight roles, or even roles that are less uptight and more upright, getting the chance to cut loose is something he relishes.
Morck, when we meet him, is a jerk. We know he’s been through something awful — it’s the show’s opening scene — and that he’s carrying trauma both physical and mental, but that doesn’t forgive the fact that he’s a lousy colleague.
Goode bites off his line readings with razor-sharpness as he curses people out and drops F-bombs aplenty. It’s initially a bit jarring because it’s not what one expects from the actor who played Ozymandias in Zack Snyder’s adaptation of Watchmen in 2009.
Goode admitted as much in an interview with Vanity Fair, in which he said, “It’s quite worrying, really, when [show creator] Scott [Frank] says he thought of me to play the part. Maybe it’s because he thinks I’ve been working in the British film industry for 20-odd years and that I’ll bring that good sense of jadedness to it.”
The people at Netflix were hardly convinced, either. He continued, “Scott had to go to bat for me because I’m not, you know, Tom Hardy or Zendaya.”
Actors, or at least successful ones, tend to have a pretty good handle on who they are and what they can and can’t do. Goode falls into that category, but not to the point where he’s afraid to take risks.
Morck is a big one because it could have gone wrong. Viewers could refuse to believe him in the role, or even worse, roll their eyes at him. “Actor Horribly Miscast as Badass Cop” is not a headline anyone wants to read.
However, Goode is so effective as Morck, you can’t take your eyes off him. Even with a strong supporting cast around him. Leah Byrne and Alexej Manvelov are members of his squad, Kate Dickie is his commanding officer and Chloe Pirrie is the missing and presumed dead subject of his case.
It’s Goode as Morck who doesn’t just hold the viewer’s attention, he commands it. If that doesn’t convince you to check him out in the nine-episode first season, the universally glowing reviews should. Goode has never been better, and could very well be rewarded for it with his second Emmy nomination later this summer.
The Acting Career of Matthew Goode
Like a lot of handsome British thespians, Matthew Goode got his start with appearances in TV shows like The Inspector Lynley Mysteries and Marple. His first big break came in the 2004 romantic comedy Chasing Liberty, opposite Mandy Moore, which was followed a year later by a supporting role in the Woody Allen drama Match Point.
His first collaboration with Dept. Q creator Scott Frank came in the filmmaker’s 2007 directorial debut, The Lookout, then came the cinematic adaptation of Brideshead Revisited and, of course, Watchmen, which introduced him to a whole new audience.
A supporting role in Tom Ford’s drama A Single Man followed, as well as sort of boring leading-man roles in Leap Year and Stoker. He also received interesting but supporting roles in prestige films like The Imitation Game, and TV shows like The Good Wife, Downton Abbey and The Crown, for which he earned his one Emmy nomination.
For the most part, they were all smart, buttoned down, maybe a bit dull characters who are successful in their way and know it.
A perfect recent example is his role as real-life ’70s film producer Robert Evans in the 2022 miniseries The Offer, about the making of The Godfather. Goode was fine in that, if unspectacular. Certainly nowhere near as good as he is in Dept. Q.
This one is something that could redefine his career, in the absolute best way.
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