I recently finished Dept. Q. I didn’t know what to expect from the show going in, other than that it was a mystery with good reviews and a bit of a horror theme (not sure that second bit is accurate after watching it myself). I was surprised it was an almost all-Scottish cast, but it was a welcome change and there were lots of familiar faces who delivered great performances. It’s undoubtedly a good show, but I came away feeling a little underwhelmed. There was a lot of hype about this show from people around me but to me it was just a pretty standard, good quality crime drama. There is really nothing about it that stands out, and the first season’s mystery (there is a more interesting overarching mystery that will presumably be concluded in later seasons) was quite easy to solve with a lot of red herring filler that was never even slightly convincing. It also does that annoying modern mystery trope of connecting the dots from both ends, rather than following the detective’s progress. The audience always has way more information than the characters investigating the mystery so the last couple of episodes was nearly two hours worth of the show just going through the motions, “revealing” things that were already incredibly obvious by that point. It’s also not scary at all, unlike what other people said, and it has this really sappy ending that felt like it came from a completely different show. It has enough going for it that I’d watch another season, though it feels like it could become a bit too formulaic in the long-run.
I recently finished Dept. Q. I didn’t know what to expect from the show going in, other than that it was a mystery with good reviews and a bit of a horror theme (not sure that second bit is accurate after watching it myself). I was surprised it was an almost all-Scottish cast, but it was a welcome change and there were lots of familiar faces who delivered great performances. It’s undoubtedly a good show, but I came away feeling a little underwhelmed. There was a lot of hype about this show from people around me but to me it was just a pretty standard, good quality crime drama. There is really nothing about it that stands out, and the first season’s mystery (there is a more interesting overarching mystery that will presumably be concluded in later seasons) was quite easy to solve with a lot of red herring filler that was never even slightly convincing. It also does that annoying modern mystery trope of connecting the dots from both ends, rather than following the detective’s progress. The audience always has way more information than the characters investigating the mystery so the last couple of episodes was nearly two hours worth of the show just going through the motions, “revealing” things that were already incredibly obvious by that point. It’s also not scary at all, unlike what other people said, and it has this really sappy ending that felt like it came from a completely different show. It has enough going for it that I’d watch another season, though it feels like it could become a bit too formulaic in the long-run.