I haven't read the books, so I'm not here to police fidelity to source material. I'm judging Dept. Q on its own terms-and it absolutely holds its own. In fact, it's one of the more emotionally intelligent crime dramas I've seen in a while.
Carl Mørck and Akram Salim are the core of this show, and what makes it sing. Their relationship is neither flashy nor sentimental-it's tense, layered, and quietly magnetic. There's a clear echo of the classic Sherlock-Watson structure, but inverted and humanized. Mørck is a brilliant but emotionally broken detective-not a quirky genius, but a man hollowed out by trauma, leaning into detachment as a survival mechanism. Salim, like Watson, appears at first to be just the grounding presence-but there's more beneath the surface. He gives off a very specific "ex-military intelligence" vibe-composed, perceptive, precise. You can feel that he's been trained to watch, not just speak.
Even more compelling, though, is how closely their dynamic mirrors Disco Elysium's Du Bois and Kitsuragi. Mørck is the Du Bois figure: emotionally adrift, steeped in failure and regret, piecing himself together through the process of the investigation. Salim, like Kitsuragi, is measured, observant, and unfailingly competent-the quiet counterweight to Mørck's mess. Their relationship is not about dominance, but mutual orbit. Salim isn't just the "sidekick." He's the moral compass, the tether to reality, the one with dignity. And unlike many genre pairings, their mutual respect grows rather than being taken for granted.
As for the complaints floating around:
"It's too stylized." What does that even mean? The green-tinged grading gives the world a sickly, bureaucratic decay-it's a choice, and it serves the mood. This isn't meant to look "real." It's meant to feel wrong, like something's festering under the surface. Mission accomplished. (Also, what's that about criticizing a show because the color grading doesn't look real, is that a thing now?)
"The office is an old toilet." Yes. That's the point. Dept. Q is dumped-literally-into society's waste bin, abandoned and forgotten. It's metaphor, not bad set design.
"Characters are unlikable." Not everyone has to be likable. They need to be believable. These people have been scraped raw by loss and guilt. Their walls are up. Watch long enough, and you'll see the cracks-and the humanity.
In the end, Dept. Q isn't here to dazzle with twists or cater to nostalgia-it's here to sit with the mess. It's a show about grief, institutional neglect, and two men learning how to function while carrying unbearable weight. It's slow, yes-but deliberately so. The silences speak. The spaces between the action matter. If you're looking for a slick procedural with one-liners and gunfights, look elsewhere. But if you want something moody, character-rich, and quietly devastating, this series doesn't just deserve a watch-it deserves to be felt.
