If there's one person who can walk into Netflix's offices and put their feet up, it's Scott Frank. With The Queen's Gambit, he created one of the platform's most-watched series in its history (over 112 million views), rekindled the chess craze, and gave Anya Taylor-Joy one of her best roles. In short, the guy has managed to balance quality and profit, and if you follow us regularly, you know that on the SVoD service, we too often get one OR the other (especially the other). It's hardly surprising when you consider that he's also involved in the scripts for Logan, Minority Report, and Godless, his previous tour de force, already on Netflix. Well, he's also been in charge of some much less successful projects, but we decided not to talk about the annoying things.
And if we're praising Frank, it's because the director and screenwriter is returning to Netflix after a stint with the competition for Mister Spade. On the program: the series adaptation of a detective saga written by Jussi Alder-Olsen, well-supervised by the Danish novelist's advice. So should we throw ourselves headlong into The Forgotten Files – Dept. Q? Here's what we remember.
What is The Forgotten Files?
Detective Carl Mork is arguably the most brilliant police officer in Edinburgh, but also the most detestable. His inability to communicate with others and his sarcasm isolate him from his colleagues. Only his partner can stand him. Until an incident changes the cards.
Several weeks later, in order to get rid of him and take advantage of a publicity stunt for the police station, his boss puts him in charge of a brand new department dedicated to unsolved cases. Alone in the basement, he will soon gather a few lost dogs in his unit to investigate a strange disappearance that occurred four years earlier.
1 – A universe that fans of the genre will appreciate
We'll get straight to the point: we expected more surprises from the man who fascinated us with chess or with a female western. In its basic premise, The Forgotten Files – Dept. Q remains a detective series that takes a bit of Cold Case: Cases Closed with a Broadchurch twist, with a Matthew Goode-esque David Tennant vibe.
The concept isn't the most appealing thing here, including stereotypes. The characters themselves are nothing original, and we get the classic talented, antisocial cop who ruins the lives of criminals and his colleagues, or the young recruit trying to prove his worth. Everyone has their own traumas, personal issues, and that little talent that makes them a great complementary team. Nevertheless, die-hard fans of detective shows will feel right at home with all the genre's codes respected to the letter. If you like investigating and connecting the dots to find out who killed Colonel Mustard, Dept. Q is nothing to be ashamed of. And for good reason.
2 – A first episode that knows how to capture attention
While Scott Frank doesn't direct all the episodes himself, his production of the first one proves that the guy hasn't lost any of his ability to catch us in his net. The introductory sequence immediately plays the shock card to ensure our interest in the sequel. A basic police series? That's already a twist we didn't see coming.
Frank has a way of confusing things to comfort us with our classics as much as to surprise us with the unexpected. We once again take our hats off to the director for the end of this first episode with a stroke of narrative genius that really gets the ball rolling as much as it blows up everything we thought we could guess.
3 – The Forgotten Files – a Dept. Q lined with noodles?
Once this initial statement of intent is established, The Forgotten Files – a Dept. Q intends to focus less on our certainties and more on fueling its story by giving depth to its characters and its plot. Here, it is Frank's writing talent that takes over, managing to involve us in every facet of the story, even in its secondary dimensions. Yes, the series is much less gripping than The Queen's Gambit, but we devour the episodes with the same ease, the story constantly feeding us new pieces of mystery with just the right amount of resolution. So that we never have the feeling of standing still.
Furthermore, we savor the dialogues between the sarcasm of our main character and the response of his interlocutors. Each exchange is dynamic and leads the protagonists to reconsider the investigation as much as to rethink themselves. The Forgotten Files – a Dept. Q may not invent anything, but as a police series, it knows what it's doing and we enjoy starting the next episode. An efficiency that owes nothing to luck.
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