The cast for the hotly-anticipated second season of Netflix thriller Dept Q has been announced.
Matthew Goode is returning as surly detective DCI Carl Morck along with his team of misfits - Alexej Manvelov as Akram Salim, Leah Byrne as DC Rose Dickson and Jamie Sives as DS James Hardy, along with several new cast members.
Production is currently underway in Scotland, with the new season being filmed and set in Edinburgh following the success of the location in the first series.
The season welcomes a slew of newbies including Aisling Franciosi (Speak No Evil) as Kimmie, Greg Wise (The Crown) as Derek Powell, Nicholas Rowe (Red Eye) as Thomas Fulton, and Tony Curran (Outlander) as Winnie Calderwood.
Also joining the ensemble is Hamish Clark (Monarch of the Glen) as Christopher Herron, Alex Ferns (Waiting for the Out) as Phil Allenbeck, Ross Anderson (Knight of the Seven Kingdoms) as Ricky Daddario, Rebecca Root (Heartstopper) as June Lovesay and Isla Johnston (The Queen's Gambit) as Agnes.
As for returning cast members, fans can expect to see Line Of Duty star Mark Bonnar as Stephen Burns, The Witch actress Kate Dickie as Moira Jacobson, Aaron McVeigh as Jasper and Still Game’s Sanjeev Kohli as Martin Flemming.
The debut series captivated audiences with its chilling twists and turns and spent six weeks in the Global Top Ten shows on Netflix.
Dept Q is written and directed by Scott Frank and produced by Left Bank Pictures for Netflix.
The gripping crime procedural series is an adaptation of Danish author Jussi Adler-Olsen’s novels, which were set in Copenhagen.
Goode admitted last year that he was told not to read the crime novel series before starring in the Netflix adaptation.
At a Dept Q screening, Goode told PA: “I don’t think (making it in Denmark) would have fit this particularly well, it worked for (Swedish noir) Wallander (with Sir Kenneth Branagh).
“He (director and writer Scott Frank) said to me, ‘don’t read the novels’, because he also made me English, which made him (his character Carl) an outsider.
“So I was able to develop with Scott a really brilliant sort of socio-political, economic, sort of history of what we thought this English version of Morck would be.”
Goode, who previously worked with Frank on crime show The Lookout, said the creator and executive producer of the new show “treats the audience like they are as intelligent as he is, which is staggeringly intelligent”.
He added: “It’s a very taut, very dark, brilliant crime thriller with also a lot of levity. It’s also very amusing, and one of Scott’s pet hates is any kind of sentimentality. So it’s a slow burn, but it unfurls itself beautifully.”
Adler-Olsen’s books about a cold case unit have been previously adapted into films including the 2010 Danish movies The Keeper Of Lost Causes, A Conspiracy Of Faith and The Absent One.
