In Netflix's Dept. Q, Carl Morck is a brilliant cop, but a terrible colleague whose sarcasm isn’t making him any friends in the Edinburgh police deparmtent. After an incident that leaves one person dead and his partner paralyzed, Morck is exiled to the basement as the sole member of Department Q - a newly-formed, cold-case unit.
The department is actually a PR stunt, designed to distract the public from the failures of an under-funded police force. But Morck builds a gang of strays who have a lot to prove and ultimately finds himself back to work when a cold case heats up.
The show is written and directed by Scott Frank and stars Matthew Goode, Chloe Pirrie, Alexej Manvelov, Kelly Macdonald and Leah Byrne. It began streaming on May 29th.
Michelle Tesoro served as picture editor for Season 1 and worked with a team of four assistant editors, as well as the sound team and VFX artists to bring Jussi Adler-Olsen’s crime series to life.
"This is my fourth project with Scott Frank, and our third time doing every episode of a series together," Tesoro reveals. "Scott brought me onto Dept. Q, and we were both super excited to jump into this crime story and make it our own.
According to Tesoro, editing Dept. Q was both a challenge and rewarding.
"Scott Frank directed the first and last blocks (Episodes 1, 2, 6, 7, 8), while Elisa Amoruso took on the middle (Episodes 3, 4, 5). After my first pass on all episodes, I could see the series like one long movie, which let me move scenes and storylines around, like Merritt and Jennings’ arcs, to keep things flowing."
Tesoro says she employed the same pacing and style for every episode in order to make the season, as a whole, feel consistent.
"We worked with a rolling sound and music mix alongside Wylie Stateman, Carlos Rafael Rivera and Tom Kramer, plus Joe Beal, our new sound editor from Boom Post in London," she shares. "I’m really proud of how the series' structure came together. Scott, Rob Bullock, our executive producer and I put in a lot of effort to keep the story of Carl, Akram, Rose and Hardy gripping and stop the audience from guessing what’s next."