Netflix viewers have been left frustrated after the new psychological thriller series Dept Q mysteriously vanished from the streamer just hours after its release.
The series follows Detective Carl Morck (Matthew Goode) as he tries to investigate the unsolved missing persons case of prosecutor Merritt Lingard (Chloe Pirrie), who disappeared from a ferry several years earlier.
Netflix users in the UK and other global regions have reported that they were watching the first episodes of the series after its release on Thursday (29 May), before finding that it was no longer available to watch.
Many viewers have reported online that when they attempted to select the show on the Netflix homepage, it appeared as if the show had not yet been released.
One person wrote on X/Twitter: “Hey @netflix what happened to #DeptQ? Binge watched the first eight episodes, went out to dinner and it is no longer even showing up on Netflix. What the crap?????
Another said: “@netflix ummm hello? Where did Dept Q go all of a sudden? Got up to episode four now it's gone?? #wtf #netflix #deptq.”
“Seems like there is some sort of problem at @NetflixUK @netflix. Had an email reminder about #DeptQ starting today. Just finished episode two & the whole thing has disappeared. You can't even search for it. I was rather enjoying it. Be nice if #Netflix told us what's happened,” added another viewer.
The Independent has contacted Netflix for comment. At the time of writing, all nine episodes of the series are available to watch again on Netflix UK.
The series is based on the series by Danish author Jussi Adler-Olsen, which has already been adapted for six films, but Netflix’s version sees the action set in Edinburgh, Scotland.
Goode’s character, an argumentative and bad-tempered detective, is part of a team assigned a special budget to investigate high-profile cold cases as a public relations exercise. The series also stars Guilt’s Jamie Sives, Unforgotten’s Mark Bonnar, Chernobyl’s Alexej Manvelov and Nightsleeper’s Leah Byrne.
In The Independent’s three-star review of the series, Nick Hilton wrote that the series has a “lazy assembly of character tropes,” but he still found himself gripped.
“This first series unfurls over the course of nine hour-long episodes, giving it plenty of time to grow on you. Goode is a mercurial performer, capable of being, by turns, appealingly smooth and discomfitingly sleazy. He is a good fit for a “defective detective” role like this. The rest of the cast – including Scottish luminaries like Mark Bonnar and Kelly Macdonald – round out a good ensemble.”
Hilton argued that Dept Q works because “it takes its mystery seriously”.
“This may seem an obvious thing for a crime drama to do, but frequently the modern mystery is gossamer thin, privileging the psychodrama of the detective over crude tools like, you know, plot. Dept Q builds a big, meaty plot that’s half-procedural, half-horror. Over time it becomes more compelling, which is a strong recommendation,” he wrote.
Dept Q is a gut-clenchingly tense ride that will have you gripped – review
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