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 kill 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."
Left: A Patrick Kennedy. Probably not the right one.
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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.
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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