Eager to study actual criminal activity, he is paired with the skeptical Detective Inspector Oskar Rheinhardt, who is struggling to solve a series of particularly gruesome murders.īetween Max’s extraordinary understanding of human behavior and deviance, and Oscar’s practical experience, the two become an unlikely detective duo, called on to solve Vienna’s most baffling cases.įilmed on location, Vienna Blood stars Matthew Beard as Max Beard is best known for his performances in The Imitation Game, And When Did you Last See Your Father?, and for his Tony-nominated Broadway performance in Skylight. Max Liebermann is a brilliant young English-born Jewish student of the controversial psychoanalyst Sigmund Freud. Yet beneath the genteel glamour, nationalism and anti-Semitism are on the rise. The next episode at least sounds promising: the case of a retired soldier convinced that he is living under a curse.From left: Matthew Beard as Max Liebermann and Juergen Maurer as Detective Inspector Oskar Rheinhardt (Photo courtesy of Petro Domenigg / © 2019 Endor Productions / MR Film)ġ900s Vienna: a hotbed of philosophy, science and art, where cultures and ideas are espoused in the city’s grand cafes and opera houses. But the plot was plodding – an uninspired cast of male suspects, and a female fashion designer who was clearly hiding something. It does have a charismatic lead in Maurer, who is the main reason for watching it. The drama is a German-Austrian co-production, and perhaps we should expect more acquisitions like this as the BBC’s budget shrinks. There is a happy medium between Silent Witness and Midsomer Murders, and this isn’t it. “What’s the matter with you, Max? Why do you find it so fascinating? Sometimes you actually sound like you’re enjoying it,” an unhappy Rheinhardt told Liebermann. “It’s a kind of penetration,” he explained. Liebermann very quickly deduced that the women had been murdered at the point of sexual climax. Then a second victim was identified, and our detective duo had a serial killer on their hands. Closer inspection (like so many dramas of this type, it loves a beautiful female corpse) revealed that she had been stabbed with a hat pin through the brain stem. In this episode, a seamstress was found murdered with no obvious sign of injury. Vienna Blood’s main selling point is its setting in turn-of-the-century Vienna, which allows for some beautiful buildings and costumes but otherwise lends things a chilly air. Detective Oskar Rheinhardt (Jürgen Maurer) and the (now famed) Freudian analyst Max Liebermann (Matthew Beard) no longer have a quirky chemistry – the older man finds the younger one annoying and a little distasteful in his preoccupation with sex, opinions which the viewer may share. It has also abandoned all pretence of being anything out of the ordinary. Now we’re into series three, and, on the evidence of the first episode, the plots are taking a darker turn. It was nowhere near as good, but it was at least trying to perk things up with a bit of quirkiness and an awkward, odd-couple chemistry between the two leads: a gruff detective inspector and a young psychoanalyst.īased on the novels by Frank Tallis, the show proved a ratings hit for BBC Two. When Vienna Blood (BBC Two) first appeared in 2019, this period detective drama had a whiff of Sherlock about it, owing to the fact that the two shows shared a scriptwriter, Steve Thompson.
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