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If Dept. Q left you spiraling in the best way possible, heart heavy, brain buzzing, soul somewhere in a rain-soaked Edinburgh alley, you’re probably craving more. Not just more crime shows, but more of that feeling. The ache. The grit.
Well, we have good news for you because Netflix has a stash of shows that scratch the same itch. We’re talking crime that doesn’t just thrill but aches. Stories that don’t scream, they haunt. People who are so broken they loop around to being whole again, just in a different shape. If you want more sad detectives, slow-burn mysteries, and vibes darker than a Scottish winter at 4 p.m., you’re in the right place. Here are five shows you should definitely turn to once you've finished the last episode of Dept. Q.
Marcella
Marcella doesn’t play by the rules, and neither does its lead. This British noir gem, created by The Bridge’s Hans Rosenfeldt, feels a lot like Dept. Q’s and is honestly the perfect follow-up once you finish the one-season-long crime drama. Anna Friel is electric as Marcella Backland, a detective clawing her way through cold cases while silently unraveling. The crimes are brutal, yes, but it’s Marcella’s internal war, her blackouts, her broken marriage, her aching desperation, that makes it hit differently.
Like Dept. Q: This isn’t about quick clues and flashy arrests. It’s about people who are hanging on by a thread, solving horrors while living on their own. Marcella, like Carl and Akram from Dept. Q, isn’t emotionally neat. She’s volatile, grieving, terrifyingly real. And the show leans into that chaos. Each season peels back layers of identity and sanity, until you’re not sure if you’re watching a crime drama or someone’s psyche cracking open on screen.
Both Marcella and Dept. Q holds tension like a bruise; they’re quiet, brooding, and absolutely unafraid to sit in discomfort. If you’re drawn to messy protagonists, haunting cold cases, and storytelling that feels like it might unravel at any second, Marcella isn’t just a good follow-up. It’s a fever dream in the same storm.
Narcos
Both Narcos and Dept. Q aren’t just crime dramas, they’re full-blown descents into the human condition, wrapped in bullets, broken systems, and the kind of characters that cling to your ribs long after the credits roll.
Narcos doesn’t ease you in; it shoves you, unapologetically, into the smoke and blood of Pablo Escobar’s empire. It’s a world where power isn’t just taken, it’s worshiped. Where justice is more of a rumor than a reality. And the good guys? They’re not saints. They’re just men playing a dirty game in a dirtier playground.
Dept. Q, meanwhile, keeps things cold, literally and emotionally. It swaps out sunlit chaos for rain-soaked alleys and the quiet ache of the past. Carl Morck and Akram Salim aren’t chasing cartels; they’re digging up ghosts. Every case is a slow burn of grief, corruption, and buried pain that refuses to stay hidden.
Both shows make their cities pulse; Edinburgh feels like it’s grieving, while Medellín pulses with danger. Both are haunted. Both are human.
The difference? Narcos is scale and spectacle, history and havoc. Dept. Q is intimacy and introspection, a scalpel instead of a shotgun. But if you’re drawn to the messy middle where justice hurts and heroes break, they’re two sides of the same bruised coin.
P.S. Bonus points if you love a Pedro Pascal thriller!
Bodies
Netflix’s Bodies doesn’t just tell a murder story; it rips it out of time and tosses it across centuries. Same corpse. Same alley. Four detectives, each stuck in a different year, 1890, 1941, 2023, and 2053, are chasing the same impossible question. It’s eerie. It’s intimate. And it messes with your head in the best way.
You’re not just watching crimes get solved, you’re watching history unravel itself. Every era brings its own grief, chaos, broken cops with too much to lose. The mystery isn’t just about what happened. It’s why it keeps happening. Over and over. Like time is trying to tell us something we don’t want to hear.
What makes Bodies hit so hard is what also makes Dept. Q unforgettable. It’s not just about solving the crime, it’s about the people trying to. Damaged, messy, brilliant people. Bodies leans on its time-jumping investigators just like Dept. Q leans on Carl Morck’s haunted intensity and Akram’s quiet brilliance. Both shows say: hey, the case is cool, but the humans? They’re the real puzzle.
Visually, both are soaked in mood. Rain-slicked London alleys echo Edinburgh’s shadowy corners. Both cities breathe with their own ghosts.
So if Dept. Q was your kind of brooding, slow-burn dive into darkness. Bodies is your next obsession. It's weirder, a bit wilder, but just as emotionally raw and soaked in secrets. Buckle up, this one’s a mind-bender.
The Sinner
Netflix’s The Sinner doesn’t just crack open crime; it slices straight into the soul. This isn’t about who did it. It’s why. Why a seemingly normal woman, Cora Tannetti, stabs a stranger at the beach in front of her family. Why Detective Harry Ambrose can’t stop digging into people’s pain, even when it mirrors his own. Bill Pullman plays Ambrose like a man unraveling from the inside, his obsession less about justice and more about understanding the damage people bury deep.
That’s where The Sinner and Dept. Q find common ground. Both shows step away from flashy car chases and perfect detectives. Instead, they focus on trauma, heavy, messy, unflinching. Carl Morck and Akram Salim aren’t chasing adrenaline. They’re chasing ghosts. What happened to Merritt Lingard isn’t just a case; it’s a wound that refuses to close.
The settings are soaked in mood. The Sinner uses quiet, eerie American towns where dread hums under every surface. Dept. Q gives us a gothic, rain-drenched Edinburgh, where even the walls seem to keep secrets.
If Dept. Q left you staring at the ceiling at 2 a.m., heart pounding over more than just a crime. The Sinner is your next descent. It's tender, brutal, and deeply, achingly human.
Mindhunter
Mindhunter isn’t just a show, it’s a descent. Created by Joe Penhall and sharpened by David Fincher’s obsessive vision, it crawls into the damp crawlspaces of the criminal mind. It’s the late '70s, the FBI barely believes in psychology, and agents Holden Ford and Bill Tench are pioneering a whole new language: how to think like a killer. They sit across from monsters, Ed Kemper, Son of Sam, Charles Manson, and instead of recoiling, they lean in. They listen. And it messes with them.
Just like Dept. Q, this isn’t about car chases or explosive shootouts. It’s about the heavy silence in the room. It’s about men like Carl Morck and Akram Salim carrying their ghosts into every case, letting trauma guide them instead of instinct. Both series strip the detective genre of its gloss and glam. What’s left is just pain, method, and obsession.
Both shows also know how to use space. Mindhunter traps you in windowless interview rooms and storm-soaked Atlanta suburbs. Dept. Q drowns you in Edinburgh’s gray gothic haze. The cities breathe. They whisper.
If you were drawn to Dept. Q for its wounded detectives and emotional rot beneath the crime, Mindhunter will pull you even deeper. No heroes. No tidy endings. Just the echo of a question: why do people do the worst things?
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All the shows are available to stream on Netflix.
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