Matthew Goode finds his darker side in crime series ‘Dept. Q’.

Matthew Goode began his acting career on the English stage before moving into film and television in the early 2000s. His film credits include Stoker and The Imitation Game but he is perhaps best known for his roles in Downton Abbey, The Good Wife and A Discovery of Witches. This month he takes the lead role in a new Netflix detective drama, Dept. Q, written and directed by Scott Frank. “There's a lot of humour in it,” says Goode. “It’s very dark, it's brilliantly written and very intelligent.”

Frank first cast Goode in his 2007 directorial debut, The Lookout, as Kansas bank robber Gary Spargo. “Other directors wouldn't necessarily have thought of me,” observes Goode, who is often pigeon-holed as the archetypal upper-class Englishman. They kept in touch over the intervening years, while both men made their names in film and, more notably, in television: Frank writing and directing Godless and The Queen’s Gambit, Goode starring in The Crown and A Discovery of Witches. Their rise to fame has coincided with a time when much of the prestige of cinema has been transferred to television. “Ever since Sopranos, everything has started to get way more elevated. It’s in a very healthy state, but also we’re in a very complicated state with streaming and everything else. All the rules are changing.”

Goodes still sees a future for film, however. While acknowledging that cinemas can be offputtingly expensive, Goode hopes the industry can find a way to keep them going, perhaps by focusing on releases by famous directors that become long-anticipated events. He can’t envision not wanting to see films by the likes of Christopher Nolan and Steven Spielberg on the big screen. “I like going and watching things with other people, as opposed to watching everything in my room – especially in those big old cinemas. I grew up in Exeter where they had the ABC, which was demolished – it had to be about 1,500 seats in there, it was fucking enormous, and quite scary for a five-year-old. It was like going to church.”

“I miss the video shop,” Goode says wistfully. “What used to be great was, you’d go with your friends, and you’d go, ‘Right, let's get a comedy, let's get a thriller, let's get this.’ I'm showing my age, but it would probably be three quid for each film, and then back home you went, and you devoured them. I was never more of a film buff than when I was 17.” Beyond the nostalgia, Goode makes a serious point: that those serendipitous discoveries on the shelves of the video shop supported independent filmmakers, helping them to find their audience and providing them with a steady revenue stream. “Now, I don't know anyone that makes any money from films.”

“Some people are quite competitive with their acting. I don’t understand that. It’s like, you could be great on your own, and maybe I can be OK on my own, but together, if everything is ticking, it makes the whole thing. Everyone needs to be good”

— Goode

Goode admits to being slightly intimidated by the prospect of working with Frank again, in spite of their long-standing friendship. “I guess I was a bit scared, because the first time around I didn't know everything that he'd been involved in before. He was just this really nice guy called Scott that I met at Disney. But now with Godless and Queen’s Gambit, I'm slightly in awe of Scott, which I think he probably rather enjoys – I'm not going to argue with him on things! Occasionally, he'll let me get my way, but most of the time I just do what he wants.”

For the second time, Frank cast Goode against type, as acerbic English policeman Carl Morck, alongside the cream of Scottish acting talent: Chloe Pirrie, Jamie Sives, Mark Bonnar, Leah Byrne, Kate Dickie, Shirley Henderson and Kelly Macdonald. “I've worked with many great actors, but this is honestly one of my most favourite companies of actors I’ve ever worked with. I'm lucky because I'm quite central to the story, and therefore I get to work with everyone up close and personal, and I just love them.” Although he plays the leading role, Goode says that the success of Dept. Q depends on the generosity and talent of the whole ensemble. “Some people are quite competitive with their acting. I don't understand that. It's like, you could be great on your own, and maybe I can be OK on my own, but together, if everything is ticking, it makes the whole thing. Everyone needs to be good.”

Alongside the progress of a cold-case investigation, Dept. Q tracks the evolution of Morck’s relationship with his new assistant, Akram Salim, played by Swedish actor Alexej Manvelov. “He's a brilliant foil for Morck. Morck doesn’t understand what he's getting: he’s just this guy who looks after the IT; he's very thoughtful and clearly very, very smart; he dresses like a geography teacher. So it's like, who is this guy? We don't want to give too much away, but we'll go on this journey where we find out that he was working in Syria. We still don't quite know what he's up to. At the end of episode two – it's one of my favourite bits in the whole series – that's when you go, ‘Oh, he's got Morck’s number.’ He's one of the few people who has.” For their odd-couple dynamic to work on screen, Goode felt that they had to get on in real life. “So, the minute we did our readthrough, I was like, ‘Right, me and you, we're going to go to a restaurant.’ It was peeing down with rain but we found this little French restaurant. We were in there for five hours – popped in for a steak and had five bottles of red with it. We just clicked straight away.”

Dept. Q is based on a book series by Danish author Jussi Adler-Olsen, with the action moved from Copenhagen to Edinburgh. But Frank also made more profound changes, discouraging Goode from reading the original books so that they could create their own backstory for Morck. “I actually felt very freed by that. We had fantastic long conversations about what his past might have been.” Although we learn early on that he’s undergone a psychologically and physically traumatic event, there is plenty of undisclosed material which Goode used to add depth to his portrayal of a difficult character.

“As long as you've worked out the psychological reasons why he is like he is, it doesn't just become a set piece to be nasty to someone. He's a brilliant, driven detective, but with all the scars. Like we all do, we've all got these scars. You want nuance as an actor – it doesn't necessarily make it easy, but it definitely gives you something to get your teeth into.” This complexity also extends to Morck’s colleagues, such as the troubled young cadet played by Leah Byrne. “Rose is a cracking example. She’s got more going on than Morck in many ways. And so does Akram, and so does Kate Dickie's character, Moira. And that's the great thing: there's more than just the mystery, we’re learning more and more about these people all the time.” By holding back some of those hidden stories, they aim to leave viewers hungry to discover more about the characters in the future. “I think by the end, by being uncompromisingly unsentimental, we hope to have won the audience over. And we hope that they will love these characters for who they are, and will want to see what comes next.”

Dept. Q is available on Netflix now.

Author: Rachel Goodyear