"Department Q": Cold cases in Edinburgh, with the "Brideshead Revisited" guy, Magic Mike, and a gay dude with a tree trunk

Link to the n*de dudes

A poster on a gay movie site recommended the Netflix tv series Dept Q: "an unlikely team of misfits solves cold cases."  As you probably know by now, I prefer comedies and science fiction, but there are bound to be gay characters, so let's go, Episode 1.

Scene 1: October 17, 2024. D.I Hardy, Police Officer Anderson, his Acerbic Mentor (Matthew Goode, left), and another cop go into a room where an old man has been murdered. The Acerbic Mentor makes fun of Anderson for being new and throwing up due to the smell, and being too idiotic to check for broken windows.  Suddenly a gunman rushes out of hiding and shoots them all. 

I figured Anderson would be a main character.  He was cute, darn it.

Anderson played by Angus Yellowlees, left, with Patrick McNamee in Touching the Void

Scene 2: A woman named Merritt is listening to a phone message from a maniac: "You think you're a righteous person, but you're not.  You're as evil as the rest of us." He plans to murder her soon.  

She walks through the rainy town, past Edinburgh landmarks like the City Chambers Building, and into the court, where she's a barrister, prosecuting a guy accused of pushing his wife down the stairs to her death. "You were upset because she was planning to leave you, you argued, and you flew off the handle."

He claims that he found her at the bottom of the stairs: "I didn't kill her! loved her!"  The jury is swayed, and finds him not guilty.

Later, Merritt runs into Liam (Patrick Kennedy), who points out that Defense didn't object to her line of questioning.  Why not?  Because she was digging herself into a hole.  And the Boss, who agrees: "you went too far."

N*de Patrick Kennedy on RG Beefcake and Boyfriends.

Scene 3: The miraculously alive Acerbic Mentor, Carl Mock...um, I mean Morlock...er, Mork from Ork...ok, Morck -- walks past St. Mary's Cathedral to a waiting room.  Har har, he's about ready to leave, but when he sees that the psychiatrist is hot, he high-tails it into her office. 

Shrink wants him to work through the trauma of being shot, but he insists that there is no trauma: he doesn't experience emotion, except for contempt for people dumber than him, which is everyone. 

Shrink: "So, are you depressed?"  

Acerbic Mentor: "Just the usual.  Wouldn't you be depressed if you were surrounded by incompetent idjits all the time?"  Why don't you just ask her out?  She's obviously turned on by superiority complexes, and I can't take a full season of sultry looks and double entendres.

Scene 4: I guess we're going to have a full season of sultry looks and double entendres.  Acerbic Mentor leaves without a date, and walks past more Edinburgh landmarks into the police station.  Everyone stares -- they figured that after being shot, he'd be out for several months, and they'd be spared his constant insults.  

I like the bloke dressed like a 1960s Flower Child.  I wonder if he's a background player or a named character.

More after the break

Main character, Detective Constable Clark, who is gay, and appears in every episode.  He is played by Aron Dochard, who is gay in real life, and has some (blurry) beefcake and n*de photos (on RG Beefcake and Boyfriends)

Scene 5: In the interrogation room, a witness who claims that she saw the gunman entering the flat is changing her story (after being threatened by the Big Bad, no doubt), while an old woman looks on, aghast.

Meanwhile Rose, who looks like Bellatrix Lestrange from Harry Potter with way too much makeup, tells Acerbic Mentor that she's not ready for him to be back.  None of them are.  She says something about a man looking for a job and bringing her biscuits, but I'm not sure if it's important.

Scene 5: Acerbic Mentor (left) goes to the Elderly Woman's office and lies down in the dark, waiting for her and District Attorrney Bruce to come in, complain about how much they hate him-- and flip on the lights.  Surprise!  Not for Acerbic Mentor -- he knows that everyone hates him.  

After ridiculing D.A. Bruce (Kal Sabir) for being Scottish (absolutely his fault, that), Acerbic Mentor gets down to business: the flat was wiped in advance to eliminate any DNA evidence. The gunman came in several days after the old man was murdered, doubtless to kill one of them.  "I'm ready to take over the investigation from that incompetent Scotsman."  D.A. Bruce stomps out.

Elderly Woman: "Did you ever wonder why people hate you?"

Scene 6: She won't let him work on the case, but he goes to a computer and observes on an animatic anyway.  He flashes back to discussing a 1966 sports match with D.I. Hardy as they pass the Anderson and enter into the murder flat. Then he looks at the memorial photos of Anderson with his girlfriend (of course) and mum, and starts to feel guilty.  Hey, a human emotion! 

Next he asks the Gay Guy and his female bff, "Is this a photo car that the witness saw the gunman getting out of?"  "Yes." "There's a McDonald's cup and chip bag under the tyre that you're too stupid to notice.  Go check the CCTV of the McDonald's closest to the murder site!"

Scene 7: Cut to bigwigs lambasting the Elderly Woman for not cutting down on the crime rate. "Go arrest more people!"  The crime rate is calculated by number of arrests, so arresting more people will increase it, dimbulbs.  Sorry, Acerbic Mentor is rubbing off.

The Cabinet Secretary wants her to start a new Cold Case Department -- just high profile, public-pleasing ones. "We'll pour money into it, of course."

"Money?  Ok, I'm in!" 

While Acerbic Mentor watches the game with his now-paralyzed partner, Merritt (the barrister from Scene 2) goes home to a renovated factory to glare at a woman who is probably her mother, not her girlfriend. She tells a new character, her boyfriend or son, to stop watching her old interviews on tv.  He gives her the finger, and she relents (dude must be nonverbal).  Later, Mum sings him to sleep.

Later -- in a far distant episode -- we will discover that she is not his Mum, she's the caretaker of Merritt's brother.  When Merrit was in high school she and her boyfriend planned a robbery.  William (Tom Bulpett, Paddy Towers) intervened, was hit in the head, and suffered a traumatic brain injury. 

Left: Tom Bulpett, playing Magic Mike at a party, writes: "Christopher Marlowe and Gertrude Stein are dead, long dead. Yet that doesn't stop them arguing over Faust."  Two gay authors?  Sounds intriguing.

I'm out of space, but you can probably figure out what happens in the rest of the episode: Acerbic Mentor becomes the head of the new department, with scoobies D.I. Hardy (the paralyzed one), Rose (the one with too much makeup), and a new character, Syrian refugee Akram (Alexej Manvelov, below).

Beefcake: None.

Other Sights: Lots of exteriors in Edinburgh and environs.

Heterosexism: Presumably Acerbic Mentor and the Shrink will start insult-making out. Or Rose.  Or both.

Gay Characters: The Flower Child, but I don't know how open he is, or how much air time he gets.

My Grade: It may be interesting to see Acerbic Mentor gradually develop human emotions due to his PTSD.  There may also be some Acerbic Mentor-Akram buddy bonding coming up.  C+.

See also: Revisiting Brideshead Revisited: Does the groundbreaking portrayal of (temporary) gay love hold up after 40 years? With bonus d*cks.

A Discovery of Witches: Some lesbians, a gay tease, a very important book, and Matthew Goode's goods

Adam Stevenson: Vampire's boyfriend, sailor's husband, ghillie dancer, possible bond*age bottom, true Scotsman

Eight staunch Scotsmen with right proper stauners under their sporrans