Netflix’s Hit Show ‘Dept. Q’: Peak Sad Boy Detective TV

Speaker 1 Hello, welcome back to the Press Teach TV podcast feed. I'm Jonah Robinson.

Speaker 2 I'm Rob Mahoney.

Speaker 1 We are here at your request, at your behest to talk about Department Q.

Speaker 1 Here we are. The listeners wrote in.

Speaker 2 They certainly did a job.

Speaker 1 Where can they clamor, demand we cover certain things, Rob Mahoney?

Speaker 2 You can clamor, demand, submit questions, give us funding for massive new undertakings in which we buy big flat screen monitors for ourselves and stock our new police headquarters at prestige TV at Spotify.com.

Speaker 2 As always, Joe.

Speaker 1 Our listener Ben wrote in and said this.

Speaker 1 The Fitz, the brogue, the wigs, the ocean, the specificity of place. I'm three episodes in and this seems like a lock for the pod.
I really hope it finishes strong.

Speaker 1 Great email from Ben.

Speaker 1 Our listener, Neil, called it a slightly bloated descendant of slow horses, but while at the same time asking for this podcast. So here we are,

Speaker 1 couple weeks late to talk to you about Netflix's crime show, Department Q.

Speaker 1 I thought we would do like a little spoiler-free section at the top just to say sort of whether or not we like it, who we think this would be for.

Speaker 1 And then we will get into it full spoilers. There's nine episodes.
I don't think there's any point in us sort of

Speaker 1 doing half the pod and then getting to the finale or whatever. So we will do like a short spoiler-free section and then it's just full spoilers all the way.
So Rob Mahoney,

Speaker 1 having spent the last 24 hours or so with the

Speaker 1 fine folks of the Department Q,

Speaker 1 did you like this show? Would you recommend it to our listeners?

Speaker 2 Definitely. Really enjoyed it.

Speaker 2 I think it's just like a pretty captivating mystery show that, yes, maybe is a little bloated in spots, ultimately is longer than your season of slow horses or most of your like British crime shows that you'll run into, but manages to thread it by juggling, I don't know, four different mysteries at the same time.

Speaker 2 And I think kind of throwing you off the scent just enough that I felt like I was always playing catch up in a really wonderful way.

Speaker 1 I, on the other hand, I really liked this show. I had a great time with it.

Speaker 1 I think Matthew Good as Karl Mork is like a top-tier TV detective.

Speaker 1 I love, and and you know, something I want to get into a little bit later is we talked a lot in our coverage of friends, your friends and neighbors about how we were like, oh, I don't care about all these side characters we constantly follow, and that is not the case.

Speaker 1 This is already on my list to talk about, and then Chris just tweeted out on the watch.

Speaker 1 He talked about it on the watch, but like every time they added a new side character, I was interested in spending time with them on this show.

Speaker 1 Like, they did a really good job fleshing out this world. This is based on a book series by a Danish writer.
I believe it's pronounced Yossi Adler Olson. And you can tell it's quite bleak.

Speaker 1 I wouldn't say this is like a jaunty little detective show.

Speaker 2 This is like, well, it is in Scotland.

Speaker 1 In Scotland, things are quite dirty.

Speaker 1 Like, it's very tough. It's very...

Speaker 1 There's some like...

Speaker 1 I had someone ask me recently, like, can I watch this with my kids? I was like, no.

Speaker 2 I don't think so.

Speaker 2 Maybe not.

Speaker 1 No. Because I would say there's some like silence of the lambs level, like like almost torture porn level sort of stuff going on in a part of the plot that is just like

Speaker 1 nothing like explicit explicit, but just psychologically tough, I would say.

Speaker 1 Harrowing is a great word for it. So

Speaker 1 not fun for all ages, but fun for adults.

Speaker 1 Yeah, yeah, I would say so.

Speaker 1 And, you know, I think the reason it gets comped to slow horses in a bunch of the emails that we got and around is A, it's, you know, a UK show, B, it's based on a series of, you know, successful novels.

Speaker 1 Yep.

Speaker 1 And C, it's sort of like a band of misfit detectives similar to Slough House and Slow Horses. It doesn't have the same

Speaker 1 inventive cursing, you know, that sort of like linguistic flair that I would say Slow Horses has.

Speaker 2 I'll say this. I did learn a lot of Scottish slang.
Oh, did you? It may have not have been an invention, but it was certainly new to me.

Speaker 1 But, but it, I think, has a slightly, I would say, a greater depth of character, I think,

Speaker 1 than Slow Horses has, just because Slow Horses both are set in, you know, both of them are aiming for that procedural, sort of, we could do a case every season kind of world.

Speaker 1 It's just, we talked about this a lot with Slow Horses in terms of like, who do you go home with on this show and who do you not?

Speaker 1 In this case,

Speaker 1 what we learn about the home life life of all of these people feels like it's more importantly impactful on the rest of the story and woven into the larger story it's trying to tell.

Speaker 1 And so I feel more emotionally attached to a lot of these characters. Definitely.

Speaker 2 I mean, that becomes like such a big structural element of the show that Carl lays out pretty explicitly.

Speaker 2 Like there are two me's, there are these two worlds, and there is that bleed over between them. But you're right.

Speaker 2 In terms of the treatment and the characterization, it's almost like all of these characters, big and small, are a river Cartwright level investment of time and plot.

Speaker 2 And some of that is like you just have more space and more time to spend with these characters as we're chasing down all of these various threads, many of which might seem very minor but become very major, of course, by the end.

Speaker 2 You know, the yarn on the board just gets ever more bold and beautiful as we go.

Speaker 2 Certainly tangled. But

Speaker 2 I think that's such a huge element of it is having all of these characters and having all these red herrings. Like, that's what holds the show, I think, pretty taut throughout its entire run.

Speaker 1 I have some caveats about that. Just I think, so something that if you haven't listened to it yet, Chris and Andy did a great interview with Scott Frank, the

Speaker 1 showrunner of the show, and

Speaker 1 who also has done a million incredible,

Speaker 1 is a screenwriter of great note. Rob and I were looking at his CV and we're like, oh, he wrote all the movies we love.
That's great.

Speaker 1 Also did Godless and Queen's Gambit and a bunch of other phenomenal scenes. Monsieur Spade, which I did not watch, but of course is one of CR's favorite shows.

Speaker 2 Watchcore.

Speaker 1 So this is a very watchcore show. CR was the one who told me to watch this like weeks ago.

Speaker 1 And like, every time CR tells me to watch a show and I ignore him, I usually have to end up like binging it at the last minute for prestige, anyway. So, always listen to Chris Ryan.

Speaker 1 That's that's the lesson here, especially when it comes to UK shows. But, um,

Speaker 1 but uh,

Speaker 1 you know, something that Scott Frank has talked about in that interview and other interviews is that he wasn't interested in reinventing the detective story, it's just a he loves a detective show, specifically a uk detective show and so he's like i just want to do those tropes but do them really well yeah and i would give this i had a great time with this show i i almost want to give it two different grades okay to average

Speaker 1 Like I would say on average, it's a B plus for me, but I would say, because I would say the answer to the mystery is kind of a B minus for me because I felt like they were trying really hard to hide the ball in a way that I felt like the ball was pretty obvious earlier than I think the show thought it was.

Speaker 1 Yeah.

Speaker 2 But

Speaker 2 as is often the case with these things.

Speaker 1 True. And then in terms of the formation of Department Q, which is this department of cold cases that is formed and the merry band of people that our detective amasses around him, his home life,

Speaker 1 crossing the line at therapy, all that sort of stuff. That's like an A, A minus to me.
That is like all really, really works for me. So overall, I had a great time.

Speaker 1 Some questions on the mystery front, but everything around all the infrastructure around it is just like solid as a rock and made it really enjoyable for me to watch.

Speaker 2 So yeah, I would say that's one area where I think the structure of this show works pretty well.

Speaker 2 Where if you are, say, say you do come across like the answer to the big mystery early enough that it might fizzle out your enjoyment of another show.

Speaker 2 In this one, we're also trying to figure out like this inciting incident where Carl and his partner and another officer got shot and what the circumstances are behind that.

Speaker 2 We're also delving into possible corruption. We're also trying to get to the bottom of like this family trauma involving this victim of this other case they're trying to solve.

Speaker 2 And so there's so many things happening that I feel like, again, even if you are zeroed in on, hey, that's a very conspicuous,

Speaker 2 you know, I'm going to omit the specific references to the clues, but there's some very specific things out there that's like, okay, yeah, I think I see where this is going. Yeah.

Speaker 2 But I just want to spend time with these people and I want to spend time packing them. You know, as usual, Joe, I want the detectives to solve themselves.

Speaker 1 Yeah, the greatest answer to a mystery is a person. And I think that, you know, the greatest cases we're trying to solve is like Karl Mork, as played by Matthew Goode.
Who is he?

Speaker 1 But like, you know, Akram Salim, who is his sort of main partner on the show, who's wonderful.

Speaker 1 Hardy, who is his sort of former partner, who is struggling after the incident, the inciting shooting that you were talking about at the start of the show.

Speaker 1 You know, this character Rose who joins his department, like all of these people, what are they here for? What is their pain? What are they trying to figure out?

Speaker 1 All of that is incredibly interesting to me.

Speaker 2 So you're right.

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Speaker 1 Anything else you want to talk about in a spoiler-free way before we get into spoilers?

Speaker 2 Well, I guess just like let's talk about, I guess, other interest points. Like, if you're not sold on this show yet, to me, we've talked about slow horses.
That's such an easy comp.

Speaker 2 I also think, like, if you were into Broadchurch at all, David Tennant stubbled so that Matthew Goode could beard. Like,

Speaker 2 we're really riffing on the like damaged sad boy detective. Yeah.
You know, as you mentioned with Scott Frank, like, this is not reinventing the wheel.

Speaker 2 We're just kind of iterating on a thing that does work and can work very effectively.

Speaker 2 And so, if you like that sort of moodiness and a big old mystery, and especially, I would say, if you like the unsparing wit of the greater United Kingdom, this is a series that can work really well for you.

Speaker 2 Like, some of the subject matter that you're alluding to, Joe, is not just like on screen in terms of the harrowing things that are happening to characters, but in these characters' backstories as well, there's a lot of really, really heavy stuff that I think if an American show tried to handle in a similar fashion, would probably fall flat on its face just because the tonal sensibility is so different.

Speaker 2 But there's something about talking about, for example, one of the characters attempting suicide previously, and it can just be handled in a way where it's like heavy and emotional and empathetic in the moment, but also later.

Speaker 2 played for some laughs in a way that I think kind of works within the world of the show.

Speaker 1 I think Broadchurch is a great comp.

Speaker 1 Happy Valley is another like, you know, know, quite popular in the U.S. show.
One that I think hasn't broken as big in the U.S.

Speaker 1 that I actually see the biggest overlap with is a show called Shetland, which, you know, is set in similarly bleak northern Scalinaire.

Speaker 1 And it's not just because Mark Bennard, who plays the Lord Advocate, and Kate Dickey, who plays their supervisor, are also on Shetland.

Speaker 1 And it's not just that Matthew Goode is wearing basically exactly what the lead detective in Shetland always wears, which is a nice sweater and a pair of jeans and boots.

Speaker 1 But that might just be the uniform up there. That's fine.
Yeah.

Speaker 2 Joe, the sweater budget on this show. This might be our zone.
You know, we're constantly talking about like, what are we covering here in Prestige TV? You know, the Ringer is a big, is a big network.

Speaker 2 Things are being covered all over the place. What is our zone? I think it might be sweater shows.
I think that might be where we live.

Speaker 1 And here's the problem, Rob, is like we live in California, which is just like...

Speaker 2 Well, Northern California, though.

Speaker 1 Not knitwear friendly necessarily.

Speaker 1 But, you know, if life could be a cozy sweater. Yeah, I think that, and Shetland is a show that I actually have like loved and tried to, you know, preach to people.

Speaker 1 But, but all of those shows, Happy Valley, Broadchurch, Shetland, do not shy away from very, very dark things.

Speaker 1 And I would say, specifically, Happy Valley and something like Scott Frank's work on Queen's Gambit, not afraid of women who are incredibly difficult, but nonetheless deserve your sympathy or empathy, or, you know, are compelling and root forable, but

Speaker 1 allowed to be assholes too. You know, that's something that he's been able to pull off in a few of his properties.
And I think

Speaker 1 it shouldn't be hard to do,

Speaker 1 you know, if we lived in

Speaker 1 an equal utopia. But we talk so often about likability when it comes to female characters.
And

Speaker 1 we've got a character, Merit Lingard, played by Chloe Pirian, like

Speaker 1 endlessly compelling,

Speaker 1 but you know even the even the bare bones wikipedia description of her character starts with ruthless ruthless and ambitious quite a difficult woman joe you know and you know so i i like difficult women so i i uh i enjoyed i enjoyed her here but um

Speaker 1 but that is that is something that this show really pulls off really well um anything else oh production design wise i will say this yeah uh there is a set piece that i don't really necessarily want to get into because it feels like a spoiler but there's a very, very visually stunning

Speaker 1 set that is used for a lot of

Speaker 1 this show. And it is echoed by

Speaker 1 the setting for this new cold case department, which is in the basement of

Speaker 1 the police building. Yeah, headquarters.
Headquarters. There you go.

Speaker 1 And it is supposed to be, you know, the shower quarters, the, the, the, like, there's supposed to be smelly toilets there and stuff like that.

Speaker 1 Unlike slow horses, this doesn't, like, you can't, you're not like, oh, what a, what a crime to be here. Beautiful greens.
It almost looks like the TVA from Loki.

Speaker 1 Like, the production design makes it, yeah, the oranges and the greens, and then these

Speaker 1 skylights that people are walking across because they're underground, uh, meant to mirror this other set piece, uh, just gives it it all this like heightened, um, almost genre, even though it's detective genre, not uh low-key time travel genre look to it that i that i thought was really fun and queen's gambit i think had a similar like pop sensibility to it yeah i mean you you can see the bones of that bathroom and how it could turn into an amazing office space if any if you could just clear out some of the the urinals you know like if we could only do that

Speaker 2 Again, like part of the effect of that lighting of like basically getting second-hand fluorescent light from the floor above is that you're just creating this spotlight for these characters in the middle of the floor for a a lot of like what turns into very dynamic bantering investigation.

Speaker 2 Yeah, and it's like that is like, of course, there's like actual boots on the ground action in this show.

Speaker 2 These are cops who are going out in the world, busting down doors with and without warrants, et cetera, et cetera, living by their own rules, parking wherever they damn well please.

Speaker 2 Joe, that's how you that's how you know that Carl is a real rebel.

Speaker 1 Um,

Speaker 1 yeah, ACAP, but here we are. Okay, so anything else you want to to say before we get into spoilers?

Speaker 2 Let's get into it.

Speaker 1 All right, let's do it.

Speaker 2 No, seriously, stop. If you have continued this far and you have any interest in watching the show, just stop and go back.

Speaker 2 There's still time. The spoilers are coming.
We're going to talk about all of the fundamental mysteries of a single season of television. You have time to watch it.
I promise you do.

Speaker 2 You're busy, but you're not that busy. You can watch it queue.

Speaker 1 Rob did it in like a day.

Speaker 2 Yeah, and the NBA finals are going on. You know, I believe in you.

Speaker 1 Okay, here we go. Spoilers, but seriously, spoilers.
Yes.

Speaker 1 Here's what I'll say: listening to Scott Frank talk to Chris Nandy about how he was sort of like writing this as he was going to a certain degree, I was kind of like, yeah.

Speaker 2 Okay,

Speaker 1 it's based, you know, it's based on a book. I will say this.

Speaker 1 I, doing my Press E TV thing, I was trying to get a hold of a copy of this book so that I could do some compare-contrast and look at the, because there's

Speaker 1 movies, a series of movies set in, you know, its original language, and but you can buy U.S. translations of the books.

Speaker 1 But my library is all out of these books, and that I think just speaks to how popular the show is right now.

Speaker 1 Yeah, the whole list is long for these books right now. So,

Speaker 1 but I did read a synopsis of the movie. Yeah.

Speaker 1 And it talks about, you know, Merritt Lingard, you know, trapped in this hyperbaric chamber by a vengeful chef is how it is described

Speaker 1 in the description of the movie I saw.

Speaker 1 And then Scott was talking about how sort of esoteric and weird it is in the book that it's like there was a car crash and it was blamed on Merritt's family because Merritt's family was happy and this other car was distracted by how happy their family was and they crashed their car.

Speaker 1 That's how Scott Frank described it. And so he basically had to come up with

Speaker 1 what's the more reasonable reason that someone would put someone in a hyperbaric chamber for four years. But here's the problem with this: the way this mystery is arranged, as far as I'm concerned, is

Speaker 1 there is no reason that anyone would put her in that chamber if they didn't have just a very long

Speaker 1 standing issue with her. So it had to be connected, like to her childhood.
It couldn't have anything to do with this mob stuff that we are embroiled with.

Speaker 1 Like there was no, there was no, the mob would just kill her. There's no way it had anything to do with that.
And so like, I was a little frustrated by um

Speaker 1 you know the the red herrings that we were following because i was like they're they're not connected if if merit lingard is still alive because akram has decided she is still alive right then it has to be a long-standing grudge and so it can't be this fresh uh you know embroilment that they are following do you know what i mean that was that was like the main my main issue with how it was constructed.

Speaker 2 I do and I don't. I mean, why does it have to be an old grudge to put someone in a hyperbaric chamber?

Speaker 2 For four years?

Speaker 2 For four years?

Speaker 2 Clearly, there is an investment of time involved. And so it does have to be something of a certain weight and substance.
But like, I think there's enough sort of offshooting threads.

Speaker 2 And most importantly, we just don't have a clear enough vision for, I would say, the first half of the season, especially, of what the threads even are and where they are separate and where they are intertwining.

Speaker 2 Where it's tough to tell, like, okay, of course, the things that happened decades ago, like, that's in its own category.

Speaker 2 But other than that, these other things are overlapping just enough, or at least plausibly overlapping just enough, that I was able to talk myself into some other possibilities along the way, even with, you know, the ominous wisps of hair that are just like, okay, well, it must, simp, it simply must be this guy.

Speaker 1 Oh, oh, the, the, the little proto-mullet. I will, I will say this.
They did give me, actually, they did give me on that. Sam Haig, the journalist.
Yes.

Speaker 2 Uh,

Speaker 1 being

Speaker 1 Lyle Jennings at the the little identity swap. That did get me.
But that was also like part. But then, why do we watch Lyle for like a million years kill the real Sam Hag?

Speaker 1 I was like, I know what happened. He killed him.
Why do we have to watch the whole thing?

Speaker 1 We don't need to see the ropes and his bag. Like, I don't need to see all of that.

Speaker 2 Do you know? That was one of the details that got me. You know, like, again, the story hinges on, I would say, a couple of leaps that you have to make.

Speaker 2 One of them is that Merritt just like would not recognize someone she grew up with, basically like the younger brother of her, her

Speaker 2 boyfriend when she was younger. That she would not recognize him years and years later.
Okay.

Speaker 1 It's a different actor, Rob.

Speaker 2 Well, it's a different actor.

Speaker 2 A different actor for her too, because

Speaker 2 not only do you just recast it, you got to put the blue streak in her hair. That's how you tell the passage of time.
Rob, I have...

Speaker 1 a whole lot to talk to you about wigs, but we'll come back to that.

Speaker 2 There's a lot of hair. But so you have to buy that she would not recognize this person if she saw him and knew him intimately much later in life.
Right. That's okay.

Speaker 2 You also have to buy that some of the preliminary investigations with the original cold case or cold cases were just kind of botched.

Speaker 2 And this is one area in which I think the show does a great job of kind of throwing us off the scent of like, how much of this is institutional? How much of this is botched on purpose?

Speaker 2 We meet and spend time with like the previous investigator and we're given like very different impressions of him at different points in the story in a way that I think really work.

Speaker 2 But

Speaker 2 the actual murder of the actual Sam Haig, throwing him off the crag,

Speaker 2 When we see it happen, which, as you said, is not something we need to see. Like, we get it.
We put it together. He's dead.

Speaker 2 That guy is dead. It's accomplished by dragging the body and leaving yards and yards and yards of blood trail all the way to the edge of the cliff and then throwing him off in broad daylight.

Speaker 1 There is a detail. The broad daylight thing is tough.
There is a detail that it was heavily raining.

Speaker 2 Oh, that's true. You're right.
You know,

Speaker 1 when they found the body. But also, I would say, when when he caves his face in with a rock, I just feel like...

Speaker 2 Well, that's blunt force. That could be off a fall.

Speaker 1 I feel like the forensics department was not doing their job if they were like, I don't think having your face hit with a rock several times is the same as you fell from a great height.

Speaker 1 I don't think it's the same.

Speaker 2 But I'm not

Speaker 2 a forensics expert. Well, to your point, Joe, the forensics department in Montgomery, Alabama on poker face was able to discern that this death came from a fastball that exceeded 100 miles an hour.

Speaker 2 That's what I'm saying. And here we are, not able to differentiate a dude hitting a dude with a rock versus falling off of a cliff face.

Speaker 1 I don't understand why he couldn't have just pushed him off. Why did it have to be like Sam came back from his climb and then thought he saw Lyle and then followed Lyle? And it was this whole thing.

Speaker 1 It was like, why isn't Sam was out for a climb and Lyle just pushed him off? End of story. That's so easy.

Speaker 1 I am glad, though, that the Sam that we knew, which of course turns out to be Lyle, was not an actual investigative journalist uh because his methods of convincing a source are just like let me strip down and and jump this woman i did text you while i was watching the show and i was like rob i'm really loving this show zero out of ten for journalism um and that was before i knew that we were watching a fake journalist but i was like what is what are all these like it wasn't just that it was the other journalist who basically attacks matthew goods character in the in the newsroom i was like what are we what are we doing here this isn't anyway uh journalism, guys, if you're thinking of becoming a journalist, this is not what journalism is.

Speaker 1 I promise you.

Speaker 2 Robin, I promise. Well, to be fair, the lens of journalism in this movie is mostly an actual investigative journalist who somehow drives a Porsche.
That's a whole separate conversation.

Speaker 1 He's a corrupt journalist, is he not?

Speaker 1 Isn't he like feeding information to the mob lawyer?

Speaker 2 But was that the that was the actual see, this is where I'm confused. What is the actual Sam and what is fake Sam Lyle?

Speaker 1 Yeah, it's a great question.

Speaker 2 I honestly don't know where one ends and the other begins, which credit to Merit. I get why she's confused.

Speaker 1 I wasn't sure if, like, she's like, I saw you at the trial and it's because he looks enough like, because there's that flashback where Sam is talking to Lyle and they bearded Lyle up so that he looks much more like Sam than he does elsewhere.

Speaker 1 Okay, anyway, this is getting caught in the weeds. Let's let's zoom back and say,

Speaker 1 I just want to shout out Matthew Good, who I've enjoyed his entire career.

Speaker 1 Whether or not he's tasting wine around the world or whatever it is he's doing,

Speaker 1 I just love that he spent three seasons quite recently playing a like

Speaker 1 time-traveling swoony vampire. And mostly people didn't care that much with love and respect to the Discovery of Witches people.

Speaker 1 Put a beard on him, put some salt and pepper on him, put some trauma on him, put a slight haggard on his, like the world's most handsome face.

Speaker 1 And this is the female gaze.

Speaker 2 This is this is it. This is, I'm just telling you, this is it.
Well, let me tell you, we're crossing lines, Joe. This is the everybody.
Oh,

Speaker 2 I don't know how you look upon Matthew Good and say, like, that guy doesn't have it. Like, of course, he does.
And

Speaker 2 he's had it in so many ways for so many years. But to your point, I think he's in most of the things that I've seen him in, been much more suave, much more put together.

Speaker 2 Like, this is Single Man, Match Point.

Speaker 2 Yeah, I mean, even in The Crown, which, like, his arrival in season two of The Crown, if you have not seen it, honestly, I think you could teleport into just those episodes, and they're almost like a standalone romantic experience in which you, viewer, will fall in love with Matthew Goode.

Speaker 2 I assure you, like, it just will be part of your experience. It's true.
But, like, him being charming is obviously a huge part of this show works.

Speaker 2 I also think his character is enough of an asshole that he really, really needs Akram to have the balance. Like, their buddy cop dynamic dynamic is, I think, what drives so much of this.

Speaker 2 And if this were just the Karl Mork show, I think we would be talking about it very differently. I think it would get weighed down in its subject matter a lot more.

Speaker 1 Well, I think there are multiple very clever, and again, this is where the show was an A, A minus to me, multiple clever ways to bolster up a character like this.

Speaker 1 There is the Akram element, which is very important.

Speaker 1 There is the therapy element, which we'll get to in a second. And then there's Jasper, like the stepson.
And what I think is so smart about that,

Speaker 1 giving the

Speaker 1 cantankerous detective,

Speaker 1 you know,

Speaker 1 someone to care about could come off as

Speaker 1 as transparently as say giving John Hamm's character a sister with, you know, who needs a little bit of extra help. Like, you know, theoretically, theoretically.
Just in theory, just in theory.

Speaker 1 But what works so well with

Speaker 1 his stepson, Jasper, who we don't find out is his stepson until a little bit later, the homeless, the lodger who lives with him, like all of that stuff, is that it's not.

Speaker 1 He does have that speech where he's like, there's two different me's, but actually, like, when he goes home, he's at conflict with Jasper. It's not like this is the softer side of Karl Morke.

Speaker 1 There is, there is, he is the worst. He's an almost like Cumberbatchian, Sherlock, arrogant, you know, asshole.
But

Speaker 1 the fact that he is taking care of this kid who is not biologically his kid,

Speaker 1 whose mom just abandoned him.

Speaker 1 And not just he can't get in touch with her because she visits over the course of the season. Yeah.

Speaker 1 Tells you so much about who his character is without hitting. It's just a huge reveal of a part of who his character is.

Speaker 1 And you see that happen again with Rose or with Akram or, you know, with these various people that he is like helping without helping. Yeah.

Speaker 1 Um, and without softening any of the uh tough edges that he's put up.

Speaker 2 So I think the show parcels out that sort of like character background exposition stuff so deftly.

Speaker 2 And again, this is another reason why, like, you, it feels like you're being pulled into all these different mysteries is you're just trying to figure out like, who are these people to each other?

Speaker 2 Like, who, who are these people that Carl is living with? Is this his son? Is this his stepson? Is this just like some 20-something college-age roommate who he has led into his house?

Speaker 2 Like it's, it's not exactly clear those things until until much later. And like we're obviously getting into different versions of Carl as we go, like, or really a softening, I will say, over time.

Speaker 2 This is, in a really interesting way, like a very therapized show.

Speaker 2 And I don't mean that just in the sense of he is going to therapy, but there are people constantly talking about Carl's state of mental health or unhealth to him, trying to help him, trying to encourage him to be like live a healthier life or to at least confront some of these things or god forbid have a conversation with his son and i think carl's like i'm very glad for those elements i'm also very glad that carl is somewhat resistant to them and you get that tension in that character where it isn't until seven episodes in that they have the conversation right like it isn't it isn't until much later in the series that you're seeing more hard-earned growth in that character and i think that works because you open the show with this inciting incident with the the you know getting shot in the line of duty and his his friend and his partner getting at least temporarily paralyzed and maybe paralyzed for life we'll have to kind of see what his his trajectory health wise ends up being and the death of this other patrolman all while carl is doing the smart ass detective thing like he is he's he's like he's right about the clues and the crime scene he's very cocky and in doing so leaves him and these other two people like open to being attacked in this way now like does he put more on that more of that on himself than he probably should of course this is a sad boy detective in a sad boy detective show this is what we're doing here but like i think it's, it's really helps that it opens with him being like right about a lot of little things, but like, kind of like wrong in a macro sense about that crime scene.

Speaker 2 And so then we get to sort of tear him down and see him sort of build himself back up.

Speaker 2 But the way he starts to build himself back up is just by making a big facade of a wall and pretending to be all good, obviously, and kind of finding his way over the course of the show.

Speaker 1 I think the revel

Speaker 1 excuse me, I'm gonna take that again. Sorry, Donnie.

Speaker 1 Yeah, I think the revelation that this you know young patrolman who we watch him essentially berate into his death in this body cam footage that opens the show yeah it's it's such a tough

Speaker 1 and i think quite brave introduction of a character this is our main character who we're gonna have to like be with and care about for the entirety of the series and we watch him do this thing where we're like jesus fucking christ like uh and then the revelation later on that this patrolman might be you know part of this larger conspiracy that's not solved inside of this season.

Speaker 1 But like, I don't need that to be true, but it is interesting that that is true. It does it absolve Carl somewhat, but not entirely.

Speaker 1 Because like, you know, he doesn't know. He didn't know at the time that that was the case.
And he was ready to break that guy into, you know, this thing that happened.

Speaker 2 And frankly, if he's wrong and it's just sort of him grasping at straws to rationalize what happened, that could be even more interesting. So

Speaker 2 it leaves you lots of good character work to deal with.

Speaker 2 And at the same time, like, this is a show that has a sense of humor about carl like this is a guy who has been through a lot who is incredibly arrogant who looks down on basically everyone around him although not not akram over time like comes to respect him pretty quickly to be honest with you but like the interrogation scene where he is describing um like i'm trying to remember who i think he might be talking about merit and kind of like her background how like she keeps all these secrets and she's so standoffish and she's so like overconfident and arrogant and the camera just like soft focuses from him to akram like raising his eyebrows in the background.

Speaker 2 I just, I really appreciate the placement and the treatment of this character. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Speaker 1 Akram, we should say, just an absolutely incredible

Speaker 1 illustration.

Speaker 2 I would take a bullet for him, you know, but what a wonderful character.

Speaker 1 Absolutely. And

Speaker 1 I think the line,

Speaker 1 when Carl asks him like if he worked for the good guys or the bad guys in Syria.

Speaker 1 And when he says, if you could, when you can tell me who those are, like, let me know yeah such a good line i will say and again i don't know maybe i've watched too many mystery shows this is definitely i've watched too many mystery shows but i'm like his dead wife i like that that i clocked very that had to it had to be a dead wife but like yeah i just the way i don't mind it but it's just like the way it's revealed is this big like what do you mean and i'm like this isn't the sixth sense like i i felt you know anyway Here's the thing about that.

Speaker 2 Like, I think there are reveals in the show that are meant to be big reveals for the audience. There are also things that are reveals for Carl.

Speaker 2 And even in that one, it's sort of like played for a laugh. Like, I think I already told you this.

Speaker 2 Like, I think you just weren't paying attention because you don't actually care about other people that much. Right.
Right. Right.

Speaker 2 But, like, ultimately, Okram,

Speaker 2 I really hope we don't get a full backstory deep dive. Like, I don't want the full view of who he's been, but I love.

Speaker 1 Don't put a flashback wig on this man.

Speaker 2 I beg of you.

Speaker 1 You don't have the budget for it.

Speaker 2 Please don't do it. You don't have the budget for it.
I don't want to see how it happens.

Speaker 2 But ultimately, for these sorts of detective pairings, this is a really interesting one because you do get the fish out of water elements in some respects, just because he's in a different place from the world in which he has policed previously or whatever his previous job was.

Speaker 2 But it's a cool dynamic because he has a whole life of relevant experience. He's not like the newbie on the force who's being coached up by Carl along the way.

Speaker 2 If anything, that's more kind of Rose getting back onto the scene and back into action, I would say, after her kind of episode.

Speaker 2 But he is, in a lot of ways, look, a broken femur here or there aside, like more of a by the book cop than Carl in a lot of respects, like waiting for the warrant. Maybe we should stop here.

Speaker 2 Are you sure you want to do this?

Speaker 2 Like, he's at least doing the gut check thing, um, in a way where this is not a character who doesn't know what he's doing, he's just a character who is not taken seriously because of the circumstances.

Speaker 1 And in that way, they're basically like sort of double-watsoning Akram and Rose

Speaker 1 in terms of like you are giving this version of Sherlock the ability to be be somewhat condescending or actually a bit more actually instructive of Rose,

Speaker 1 you know, when he is asking her questions and leading her to ask the right questions, et cetera. But then you also have in Akram, like

Speaker 1 someone who is just actually more capable than Carl in many, many respects. And that is really deeply enjoyable to watch at the same time.

Speaker 2 Well, and we might even have the rare triple Watson, if you want to include Hardy in that camp as well.

Speaker 2 he's he's a little bit more at a remove because of his injury and his health during the season but you can tell we're getting him back up and moving we're getting him down into the office by the end of the season here's one of my unsolved mysteries for you joe um these two other cops who we spend a lot of time with on the top floor i have

Speaker 2 haircuts yeah i have i have nicknamed blondie and fringe okay i call i just called them the haircuts

Speaker 2 Are the haircuts going to join Department Q or are they meant to be our liaisons to the rest of the force?

Speaker 1 I think we need them above ground.

Speaker 1 I think they need to be above ground to sort of be skeptical.

Speaker 1 But when they showed up

Speaker 1 at the ferry,

Speaker 1 I was like, that was great at the end. I was like, oh, the haircuts are here.
This is great.

Speaker 1 Phenomenal ending to that. Hi, it's Eva Longoria.
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Speaker 1 Let's talk about some therapy. You talked about how therapize the show is, but we literally have a TV therapist here.

Speaker 1 And what I have shared with you is like, can be one of my least favorite TV tropes. Yeah.
Works extremely well here for a couple of reasons. Number one, they hired Kelly McDonald.
So, you know,

Speaker 1 it's just going to work no matter what.

Speaker 1 And then two,

Speaker 1 I don't know if anyone listening to this listened to our episode on stick, but we're just basically back in tin cup territory where we are disrespecting the doctor-patient boundaries.

Speaker 1 I wanted to run through some of the TV detectives that you and I have encountered in our time together here on the Prestige TV podcast feed.

Speaker 1 And I want you to give give them a letter grade.

Speaker 1 And you can base that on efficacy in terms of plot.

Speaker 2 Okay.

Speaker 1 Or are they actually good therapists?

Speaker 1 Your call.

Speaker 2 Thank you for that freedom, Joe. Thank you for the open prompt.

Speaker 1 You're welcome. So, I mean, like, we'll start.
Dr. Rachel Irving, played by Kelly McDonald in the show.
Yeah. What letter grade are you giving her?

Speaker 2 I think I might be a little more mixed on this plot line than you are. I'm just like, with

Speaker 2 what is this character? Like,

Speaker 2 this is how it felt to me it felt like they wanted Carl to have some sort of vaguely romantic interest but couldn't drum up a reason why in the middle of all this other shit he would just be like talking to a random woman at a bar

Speaker 2 and so they made it a department mandate for him to get hot for therapist instead I have I have the flip side to that okay

Speaker 1 Dr.

Speaker 1 Carl Morke is such a maverick the man does not park doesn't care where he parks he doesn't that even if he had department mandated therapy he would not go to it unless the woman were extremely hot.

Speaker 2 That much is made very clear.

Speaker 2 He is one foot in the elevator. Yeah.
Really, two feet, and then has to put one foot back in to stop it. Yeah.

Speaker 1 And then when it's not her,

Speaker 1 when the other therapist comes back, he's like, Bye.

Speaker 1 I'm not doing this. So

Speaker 1 her being extremely attractive, I felt was a reason to keep Carl in therapy.

Speaker 2 But I think that is true.

Speaker 1 So what letter grade are you giving Dr. Rachel Irving a maybe too thinly constructed a character for you?

Speaker 2 I'm going to give her both as a character and in terms of her therapeutic efficacy. Like

Speaker 2 C-.

Speaker 1 Oh, tough. Okay.

Speaker 1 The great cat.

Speaker 2 He also shares, I gotta say, shares way too much.

Speaker 2 Like, like, she is, she is trying to engage with him in a way that, yes, I understand like what is happening here and why the lines are being blurred in the way they are, but like, ma'am, you gotta be aware of that.

Speaker 1 In terms of Scott, Frank was writing this as he went. Do you think he decided one episode she's married?

Speaker 1 And then later he's like, no, she just wears a ring sometimes because she almost got married once.

Speaker 2 These were like the Roy grandkids just like disappearing from the plot line.

Speaker 1 Yeah, that's a question I have.

Speaker 1 Okay. Catherine O'Hara, The Last of Us.
Gail on The Last of Us.

Speaker 2 See, I think she is a much more effective therapist in very unconventional times. Okay.
So maybe not as, maybe honestly, similarly unserved by the plot, but better as I would say.

Speaker 2 She's probably like C C plus plot character-wise, but maybe a solid like BB plus for a post-apocalyptic therapist.

Speaker 1 Okay, gets paid in weed and booze, but

Speaker 1 and is willing to write off a character as just like a liar and not worth saving, but like but these are trying times, so that's okay.

Speaker 2 Desperate time. Seriously.
Like, I think, look, once the zombies start coming out, you can call people on their bullshit in a more exp like in a quicker way.

Speaker 2 Like more, you can be more upfront, you can be more direct. Like, we just don't have time, you know? Okay.

Speaker 1 Dr. Rachel Blake, played by Harriet Sansom Harris, who was on the agency.
And if you didn't watch The Agency or listen to us cover the agency,

Speaker 1 she is a strong plot device who shows up not only to therapize Michael Fossminder's character, but also to just ask dummy questions in a room about the procedures of how to be a spy in certain cases.

Speaker 1 So Dr. Rachel Blake, what do you think?

Speaker 2 She is a plot device. There's no doubt about it.
But a plot device that worked on me. Okay.

Speaker 2 I think maybe a BB plus range for her, in that part of her role in that show is like she is acting the soundboard. She is acting the dummy.

Speaker 2 She's almost like making Martian therapize and debate against himself in order to coax out the real him within the layers of various personalities he's created.

Speaker 1 I think

Speaker 2 the bug is the feature in a lot of ways in the agency.

Speaker 1 Okay. Miss Casey Severance.

Speaker 2 Is she a therapist?

Speaker 2 Life coach? Inspiration? Yeah.

Speaker 2 I mean, A. A plus for everything Miss Casey related.

Speaker 1 A plus for Miss Casey.

Speaker 1 Bryony, adolescence.

Speaker 2 What's higher than A plus, frankly?

Speaker 1 I know, exactly. A plus with five gold stars after it.
A Michelin rating, like whatever we can do.

Speaker 2 I jumped too fast.

Speaker 2 Maybe I should have left the A plus just for Bryony, but I mean, powerhouse episode within a powerhouse season, like to stand out in that season of adolescence really says something.

Speaker 1 Okay. only two more to go.
Uh, and this is again how many I went through all the shows we've covered, and these are it's there haven't been that many, to be honest with you.

Speaker 2 Like, they're just, they just all have a therapist in them.

Speaker 1 Uh, Lily Ray, who played Dr. Liz Rush on Presumed Innocent, who decided not only to be

Speaker 1 a therapist for one member of the family, but kind of every member of the family.

Speaker 2 That's that's gonna be an F for me. It's a terrible decision.
It's really bad. Don't do that.
Especially when one of them turns out to be a murderer. You know, it's just, it's just not good.

Speaker 1 It's not good, and it's not the one you think.

Speaker 2 Okay, and last but not least,

Speaker 1 I'm counting it. The Linda episode of Fargo season five.
That counts as therapy.

Speaker 1 We're making dolls. We're, you know, doing therapy via puppets.

Speaker 2 Yes.

Speaker 2 You know,

Speaker 2 I'm going to say a solid,

Speaker 2 again, I'm going to go in the B-plus range. And the only reason I'm not going higher than that, because I love that episode

Speaker 2 is mostly that it is a mental construction of what you think your therapy is going to to be in, like an imagined format.

Speaker 1 It's true. It's not actual therapy.
It's dream therapy. And that's a kind of therapy in and of itself, especially when there's puppets involved.

Speaker 2 But here we go.

Speaker 1 Okay. That has been.
Oh my God, Joe.

Speaker 2 I cannot believe there's been that many

Speaker 1 therapy corner with Rob and Joanna.

Speaker 2 You got to do better.

Speaker 1 Would you like to revise your grade for Dr.

Speaker 2 Rachel Irving, given everything you just heard?

Speaker 2 You know what? I think I might. I think I might.
I think

Speaker 2 I'm willing to go as far as B-,

Speaker 2 Yeah. But not for the, again, effectiveness of her actual therapy.
Even though, like, Carl is someone who needs, I think, a bit of a more adversarial relationship with his therapist.

Speaker 2 Like, he needs someone who will poke and prod him in the way that many people do. There's some people who just need to be heard.

Speaker 2 And there's some people who, like Carl, need, you got to cut through some layers to really get to anything meaningful. You got to sit his ass in the chair because he wants to get out.

Speaker 2 He's looking to bounce at any opportunity.

Speaker 1 You got to peel through a lot of defensiveness and knitwear to get to the heart of

Speaker 1 Detective Age Inspector.

Speaker 2 Thick netwear. Thick network.

Speaker 2 Thick knitwear.

Speaker 2 You know, the cables, that's just scissors aren't even going to get the job done. You need like bolt cutters for that thing.
It's true. Okay.

Speaker 1 On the on the casting front, I want to say, um,

Speaker 1 here are two main. I've already mentioned Shetland as like a source for the cast here.
Yeah. We've also got some strong Game of Thrones private presence.

Speaker 1 Jamie Sivs, I want to say his name who plays Hardy,

Speaker 1 Mork's former partner,

Speaker 1 Jory Cassell on Game of Thrones, got a knife through the eye in season one. Great to see Jory here.

Speaker 2 It's just great, too, an endorsement of you and your visage that you just keep getting cast as like, you're the reliable right-hand guy I can implicitly trust.

Speaker 1 Yeah, and we'll be really bummed that he's injured.

Speaker 2 Totally.

Speaker 1 Sash dead. Okay.

Speaker 1 Kate Dickey, of course, the legend as their commanding officer.

Speaker 1 AKA Lysa Aaron. how did Kate? I love Kate Dickey anytime she shows up in anything.

Speaker 1 Even on Loki, where she was not used very well, I still just really like spending time with Kate Dickey and her wonderful accent. So how did she work in this role for you?

Speaker 2 Quite effectively. You know, like the, again, the Diana Taverner comp is like right there for us as we come off of Slow Horses and eventually back into the next season of Slow Horses very soon.
Yeah.

Speaker 2 You know, this character has some similarities in terms of the dynamic, but is not like, I think maybe a little bit political, much less less political than Diana Taverner is, at least cravenly so, just kind of pragmatic as an actual leader and manager to the extent that you have to just like play this game.

Speaker 2 Like, I think the balance they walk with her in terms of, again, trying to prod Carl into actual healthy directions for himself as someone who clearly is like invested in him as a person, but the ways in which that manifests in the workplace feeling adversarial to him, I just think creates like a great running through line for this show.

Speaker 1 And similar to Taverner, of course, there is the, from the beginning, there is the misallocation of funds, right? Because she is tasked to create this department with a healthy budget.

Speaker 1 And we see she shoves them down in the basement

Speaker 1 with no resources. And all of a sudden upstairs, everyone gets new

Speaker 1 phones and big screen TVs and whatever. So let's say.

Speaker 2 I think that's just a smart play by her.

Speaker 2 I think that's well done police work in terms of getting resources for the bulk of the department and not like your big game hunting you're doing downstairs on a long shot.

Speaker 1 So,

Speaker 2 craven misallocation of funds, but um, and then but pragmatic allocation of funds.

Speaker 1 Um, and then uh, okay, if you want to defend bad bosses, I will defend bad therapists, and that's and that's just where we will be.

Speaker 1 Well, there's also the implication, again, when we get this whole strange arachnophobia sequence that happens at the end of the season, let's let's let's pause right there.

Speaker 2 What is going on with the arachnophobia?

Speaker 1 I don't know, but isn't the implication of all of that that she is somehow involved in the corruption surrounding the inciting incident that put Carl in the hospital and Hardy in the

Speaker 1 crutches?

Speaker 2 My read on that sequence is that she has an actual fear of spiders.

Speaker 1 Yes.

Speaker 2 And is listening to a...

Speaker 1 Once again, therapy comes through. She's listening to a self-help tape on how to deal with your arachnophobia.

Speaker 2 She is. And she was very panicked earlier in the season when she visited the therapist's office and found that there were cobwebs involved.
It was like, how could this be a therapeutic environment?

Speaker 2 And she's looking to apply that fear and surprise of seeing a spider to seeing something that I guess is just like not as alarming to her in some way with these crime scene investigations.

Speaker 2 Like, is she trying to drum up the Pavlovian response of some kind of fear from something that she's actually not that afraid of?

Speaker 1 I don't know.

Speaker 1 It felt like a dramatic way to have her look through the case file and communicate to us that she might have her hands dirty on this and that the net is closing in around her because Carl is helping with this investigation now, even though he's not supposed to be.

Speaker 1 And so they're getting the correct answers

Speaker 1 on this case that she seems to have been implicated in.

Speaker 2 See, I just don't think you would cast Kate Dickey for such a character. I think you only cast her for very straightforward, positive influences on especially our main characters' lives.

Speaker 1 A kindly, good-hearted person.

Speaker 2 And she so often is.

Speaker 1 Last but not least, on the thrones front,

Speaker 1 Clive Russell,

Speaker 1 who is

Speaker 1 playing Jamie Lingard, Merritt's father,

Speaker 1 the Blackfish himself,

Speaker 1 has to wear one of the worst wigs, I think, I've ever seen in a flashback that is full of truly terrible wigs for no discernible reason.

Speaker 1 I don't know why. I really feel like if he had just had gray hair in the flashback, I wouldn't have have been that distressed about it.
And

Speaker 1 young Merritt having like a party city, but make it like early 2000s scene girl

Speaker 1 blue hair. This is one of the, genuinely one of the worst wigs I've ever seen in my life.
And like,

Speaker 1 I know they can do better than this. I feel it.
I feel it in my bones. I don't know what happened here.

Speaker 2 They definitely can. Again, they must have blown the budget on sweaters.
Like, it's the only plausible explanation because this is your world, Jill. I am mostly quite wig blind.

Speaker 2 Like, it just does not bother me. I don't usually clock it.
These were upsetting, just genuinely took you out of these sequences that I think otherwise flashbacks that work quite well.

Speaker 2 And yet, I'm just like watching this jet black wig on this man's head wriggle around. It doesn't make any sense.

Speaker 1 And hers is like basically shiny. I'm just like, I just,

Speaker 1 it was, it was really tough for me. And then, last but not least, I want to say,

Speaker 1 we've already covered the thrones. I just want to say that half of the cast of the Doctor Who episode, Tooth and Claw,

Speaker 1 which is the Queen Victoria Werewolf episode,

Speaker 1 is also here. And I just want to shout them out.

Speaker 1 Specifically, the woman who's playing the vain, rich, villainous head of the mental institution.

Speaker 2 Again, what a construction. That's when you're going like really deep into almost Agatha Christie territory, just like cartoonish, like baroness of a benefactor woman.
Yeah.

Speaker 2 Fucking wonderful, wonderful stuff. Like, this is part of what I love about specifically like British and in this case, like Scottish or originated like police procedurals.

Speaker 2 Are the interrogation scenes are just so different.

Speaker 2 Like the amount of time, like you get in that little zone, and you can feel the bubble forming around you and the characters as you're like, oh, we're just going to spend six minutes here having this conversation.

Speaker 2 Like, this is just what this is going to be.

Speaker 2 And we're going to read their faces as they do like the two, like the double interpretation reaction shots to basically everything and that's a huge part of the fun and i think a huge part of what makes this season so fun even as we're delving into murder and disappearance and suicide attempt and like it's again very very bleak stuff but it really really does work and i think it feels it feels breezier than it probably is

Speaker 1 and i think to go back to this production design question i think

Speaker 1 like when you think about her office

Speaker 1 and the setup there, the like gilded details of her office.

Speaker 1 When you think about the church with the rainbow-color stained glass, where we find the cop who was previously on the case,

Speaker 1 again, these are just very like poppy visuals, which is different from

Speaker 1 the color palette of a broad church, Happy Valley, Shetland, or even any of these like bleak Scandinavian detective stories, which you know is the origin of this particular story.

Speaker 1 Those are very washed out, like gray sort of environments.

Speaker 1 And so to take that world and put it in this sort of very

Speaker 1 candy-colored sometimes

Speaker 1 vision, you know, Scott Frank is saying, I'm not here to blow up this genre. I'm just here to do this genre very well.
And in many cases, in many ways,

Speaker 1 wigs and some twists and turns aside, I think he did. I think he did a really great job.
But he is also putting like

Speaker 1 an American stamp on it, yeah. Um, in a certain way, he's you know, he said that

Speaker 1 originally they thought they might set this in Boston or Vancouver, he was like somewhere with a fairy, and then they decided he got him a fairy, but they decided to do um Edinburgh, they decided to do Scotland, and I love that they did Scotland, I think it makes the show.

Speaker 1 Uh, I don't know that I wanted to watch the Boston version of this show, I'm good, respectfully,

Speaker 1 but I, you know, to take Scotland and uh,

Speaker 1 Edinburgh, a beautiful place, but a beautiful place that is like old world

Speaker 1 and,

Speaker 1 you know, stone and all of this sort of stuff and make it just poppier and more colorful is just like a really interesting thing to do

Speaker 1 that I thought, you know, makes this show stand out from the other shows that it is trying to be in lockstep with, I guess.

Speaker 2 It's not like the other girls, Joe. I don't like, I don't know what to tell you.

Speaker 2 But yeah, I think it's, and it's big city versus like small town village as well like the differentiation Immediately of all those locations and this is another like classic sort of mystery trope in a like where in the world is Carmen San Diego kind of way where it's like when you need to re-interrogate the previous investigator who's now running the rehab out of the church like you go back to the church you just go back to those locations and so you create this visual shorthand that I think makes a lot of sense and makes the whole story feel very very intelligible I was I was super impressed and like we should probably devote a little bit of time talking about Merit specifically and the hyperbaric chamber tube that she's like trapped in old boy style basically throughout this season.

Speaker 2 Yeah.

Speaker 2 That storyline is yo-yoing through time, and there's not one Chiron on screen saying day one, year one.

Speaker 1 I was surprised that we didn't get a year

Speaker 2 number on anyone. On Netflix, of all places.
Well, they know you're not looking at the screen. So they, you know, they're saying it out loud.
That's the important part.

Speaker 1 They won't be reading, so don't bother giving them numbers or,

Speaker 1 yeah. Anyway, sorry, go ahead.

Speaker 2 But of all this stuff that's happening in this show, like Chloe Peary's performance as Merit, like she is acting opposite, mostly no one, sometimes various hallucinations, sometimes performing dental surgery on herself.

Speaker 2 It's a tough gig. And I think she mostly really nails it.
Like those scenes feel...

Speaker 2 really interesting.

Speaker 2 Obviously, you're pulled by the central mystery of what's happening, but she also just has like a great silent film actor kind of expressiveness that really, really works for these scenes in which she's absolutely saying nothing at all.

Speaker 1 I really, I thought her performance was so good. Once again,

Speaker 1 you know, similar to, let's say, a John Ham-esque. You know, she is, she has a brother who draws out this other side of her.
That is, you know, part of her story. But

Speaker 1 I

Speaker 1 love how we meet her.

Speaker 1 I think the timeline trickery that they play in the first first episode actually is done quite well, especially since they mentioned a number of times when talking about the establishment of Department Q that like you can have a special connection

Speaker 1 in the advocate, you know, like, so you're like, oh, Merit's going to be their lawyer that they're connected to or something like that.

Speaker 2 Let's Avengers this shit up. Like we're getting the team together.

Speaker 1 Yeah. And then flash to,

Speaker 1 you know,

Speaker 1 her wig and you're like, no, that lady has been in that hyperbaric chamber for four years.

Speaker 1 So all of that works really well. And I love how we meet her.
And I think

Speaker 1 she's really believable as someone who has had to hard scrabble her way

Speaker 1 out of a tough place.

Speaker 1 I love when,

Speaker 1 I think, yeah, it's Hardy who's like looking at her car, her watch, all the stuff like that. Yes, it's it's generally it's family money, but he's like, good job, Merit.

Speaker 1 Like you got yourself into a better life. You did that for yourself.
I find her like believable in all the scenes when men are like, yeah, I lost my mind. Was willing to throw away my family for her.

Speaker 1 I find her compelling enough to be believable for that.

Speaker 1 And she does have this incredibly sort of similar to Anya Taylor Joy, like a very compellingly interesting, different face that is really, really fun,

Speaker 1 endlessly watchable. Not fun.
I'm not having a fun time in the hyperberg chamber, but. Endlessly watchable to me.

Speaker 2 She's clearly not having much fun. And upon that very interesting, very watchable face.
I mean, particular salute to the makeup team who make her look like she has not seen the sun in four years.

Speaker 2 Do not drop the skincare regimen. We don't want it.
It's

Speaker 2 really tough scenes down there.

Speaker 1 I will say shout out to Andy Greenwald, who dropped a really impressive Scottish accent when he was talking about how it only takes her three months to be like fine.

Speaker 2 Yeah, looking great.

Speaker 1 Fully well adjusted. The hair is glossy.
Everything looks fine.

Speaker 1 But yeah, that's, you know, yeah, Chloe Perry is wonderful. And like,

Speaker 1 the show does not need to have her in its future. It does set up this world where we have characters like The Lord Advocate or Kate Dickey's character Moira.
All these characters can come back as

Speaker 1 touch points around the department if they just want to. take on the next book and do a different case.
We don't need to have Merit Lingard in the future, though we could,

Speaker 1 you know, in theory. If I were her, I'd be like, I'm not going back to

Speaker 1 being an attorney, no thing. Absolutely not.

Speaker 2 But with all that family money, like, again, she doesn't really need it at this point.

Speaker 1 Yeah. So,

Speaker 1 yeah. Okay.
Anything else you want to talk about?

Speaker 2 I think just as far as the merit mystery goes, like the whole, again, her whole plot line is based on the idea that she's been trapped in this hyperbaric chamber and meant to recount the people that she's felt that she has wronged to find the one right answer that will satisfy her captors, which again is like kind of silly, ridiculous in terms of who ended up capturing her, but also kind of silly, ridiculous in the way that these mysteries often are.

Speaker 2 So I'm very much here for it. I love the idea that she is reliving all of these mistakes, most of which are like oriented to her job, right? Like people she has wronged,

Speaker 2 potential informants who she did not protect and then get injured while in prison, like those kinds of things.

Speaker 2 And the one thing she's actually being held for is something that she really isn't responsible for at all. Like is really not her fault.

Speaker 2 And the idea of couching like this twisted form of like revenge in personal justice, this idea of like you're trying to get justice for your son who died or your brother who died.

Speaker 2 And in doing so are like really misinterpreting any sense of that word or any sense of what justice actually is, I think is such a smart riff on this idea and this character who's obviously a prosecutor in her own right.

Speaker 2 And it kind of takes a lot of the assumptions about this kind of story and flips them on their head in a way that I really, really appreciate.

Speaker 1 It um, it's interesting. This is like the third duck in a row of um stories that have covered recently, The Last of Us being one of them.

Speaker 1 And then Mallory and I did a Batman Begins Anniversary Pod over on House of Arm. Both of those two properties talked about the difference between justice and revenge.

Speaker 1 What is revenge and what is justice? And putting a woman in a hyperbaric chamber for four years, I'm going to say it's

Speaker 1 revenge.

Speaker 1 But this idea of like, what is pure justice? Justice is about like, you know, what

Speaker 1 making things right, serving what is the, for the greater good of the community. And then vengeance is this personal

Speaker 1 punitive thing, which is different.

Speaker 1 Something to think about in these trying times we live in.

Speaker 1 We have gotten all the way here and we have not mentioned Shirley Henderson. And that's mostly because they did not use the great Shirley Henderson very

Speaker 1 much to her ability. But she's here and she's great as always, but

Speaker 1 she can always do more.

Speaker 1 That was like, I agree. Andy said this in the interview with Scott Frank.
He was like, I was sure she was the murderer.

Speaker 1 And I felt, I was like, at the very beginning, I was like, how is it not in the first episode? I was like, how is it not Shirley Henderson? Because why is she here just playing like a kindly woman?

Speaker 1 You don't cast Shirley Henderson to do that. Scott Frank's like, I do.
And that's what he did. So, you know.

Speaker 2 They got to round out the cast with enough people you're at least looking at, right?

Speaker 2 And you're, and again, it's like maybe even for an episode or two, and specifically the fact that she is in the opening of Merritt's backstory, where you're like, this must be a character of import.

Speaker 2 And she is in her way, just not in the way that we might have anticipated coming into that scene.

Speaker 1 It is, she is a safe harbor for William.

Speaker 1 And, and also, I really liked how the William character was portrayed. This person who has

Speaker 1 suffered this terrible trauma is, you know, obviously quite dependent on people taking care of him, but also

Speaker 1 has this whole sequence where he is making things happen himself and playing a key part in rescuing his sister, his sister who is taking care of him. And I thought that was really, really wonderful.

Speaker 2 The wordless reunion between Merritt and William is really something. To the point that even Carl, who just got shot, is like, hold on, hold off on the medical attention.
I need to watch this.

Speaker 2 And I get it.

Speaker 1 He's like, I'm in a sling. It's all I need.
I've got

Speaker 1 my stories are on. The shot of

Speaker 1 Chloe Perry in

Speaker 1 the

Speaker 1 casket, the hyperbaric casket.

Speaker 2 The hyperbaric stretcher.

Speaker 1 Yeah, stretcher. There you go.
It's not a casket. That's grim.

Speaker 1 When she's putting her hand up to the window. And so basically, she put her hand up to the camera.
So the camera is just like right on her hand, looking down at her face.

Speaker 1 I thought that was a really, really, really good shot. And you're right to call out.

Speaker 2 I thought it was really smart for something like the church to be such a recognizable place that when we go back there we don't have a minute of like wait who's this guy again we're like oh it's the guy who is only ever in that church that's fine um so the little visual reveals within that scene of like you see him in the church and he's drinking and you're like oh my god there's something happened and then yeah you get that reveal turning his head where he's been beaten to all shit by these three other like muscle guys effectively like in the again the organized crime subplot that is kind of humming underneath this story.

Speaker 2 Yeah. Which I imagine we are going to revisit, Joe, as the seasons roll on, as we get into other stories.
Like,

Speaker 2 it has to be baked into some element of a season two, right?

Speaker 1 I don't think you cast someone as distinctive-looking as Douglas Russell as Graham Finch if you don't plan to bring that.

Speaker 2 Don't put a character named Graham Finch in your story if he doesn't have some bigger part to play.

Speaker 1 And if he doesn't have goons who are willing to say, like, the worst thing possible to a teenager in an ice cream shop,

Speaker 2 yet another argument in favor of not letting your kids watch this show. There you go.
Okay.

Speaker 1 Anything else you want to say about this show?

Speaker 2 Overall, I just want to praise Department Q for, like, I think in the end, especially, like, it gives us just the right amount of post-script indulgence where we get those moments, like with Marin and William.

Speaker 2 Ultimately, we get this moment where Merit kind of comes out of the elevator and bumps into Carl, not really knowing who he is as she's like trying to find him.

Speaker 1 And he doesn't say anything.

Speaker 2 He doesn't say anything. And so it's like we get, she gets to look at her own investigation board.

Speaker 2 And so you get these like little emotional payoffs, but no big speech, no like saccharin line, no like not, not even like a knowing, like a knowing glance necessarily.

Speaker 2 It's all thrown off like really, really effectively. And after a story like this, like that's kind of what I want is like the quiet resolution.
Yeah. And then we're getting back to work.

Speaker 1 All right, Scott Frank.

Speaker 1 If you're listening, and I hope you're not,

Speaker 1 just because I hope you live your life and don't listen to podcasts about your own show. But

Speaker 1 we'd love a season two.

Speaker 2 Yeah.

Speaker 1 More problematic therapy for Joanna, more mean bosses for Rob, and

Speaker 1 we'll have a great time.

Speaker 1 Anything else you want to say, Rob?

Speaker 2 I guess just email us at prestige TV at Spotify.com with whatever further demands you may have for our future coverage, Joe. We're trying to figure out what's next on the agenda.

Speaker 2 This one snook up on us, and I'm really glad we caught up to it.

Speaker 1 Absolutely.

Speaker 1 We have something cooking a plan for this odd, contentless summer. We have some ideas, but.
Yeah, is it cooking?

Speaker 2 I would say it's like on the counter, dough is rising. You know, like we're not in the oven yet.

Speaker 1 Do you cook bread, Rob? You don't. You bake bread.
But yes, the stir-fry is still being assembled, and then we will hopefully dish it up to you.

Speaker 1 Thanks to Donny Beacham for his work on this. It's late on a Tuesday for Donnie on the East Coast.
So thank you so much. And we will be back with something for you soon.
Bye.