Max’s tediously conventional fiancé Clara is much in evidence (Luise von Finkh, pictured above with Max and Oskar). To be fair, the first episode, which deals with the murdered clairvoyant (“a hoax or witchcraft?”) is perhaps the weakest. The boxes are ticked: here’s a Klimt frieze and a woman collapsing in hysterics (soon to be helped by Max and the talking cure), there’s a Ferris wheel reference to The Third Man here are some lace-petticoat-clad ladies of the night lying in pools of blood, there’s a clairvoyant who fleeces her clients, though, as the inspector shrewdly observes, ahead of his time, “There is no difference between your Freudian cure and these poor souls spilling their grief to a charlatan like her.” Shot on location in Vienna, the bustling street scenes, elegant caf és and Opera House vistas nevertheless have an ersatz, stagey quality that’s hard to get excited about. You feel that it should be interesting, given the era, the setting and the references to real-life Freud cases such as the Wolfman, but it’s a struggle to engage with, never escaping its costume-drama shackles amid a hammy melée of accents. Vienna Blood, written by Steve Thompson ( Sherlock, Deep State) and directed by Robert Dornhelm and Umut Dag, has a British and central European cast and is based on Frank Tallis’s best-selling Liebermann novels. Rheinhardt can’t stand Max at first but by the end they’re thick as thieves, making unfunny jokes about their hats. He develops an annoying habit of saying, “Welcome to the case, Inspector,” whenever his cunning Sherlock-Holmes type psycho-sleuthing starts to show results. Of course, Max’s psychoanalytic insights and newfangled ideas about “profiling” are vastly successful. In order to understand the criminal mind, Max is shadowing detective inspector Oskar Rheinhardt (Juergen Maurer). “We don’t change our working practices every time some Jewish doctor publishes a book,” scoffs the hospital director (anti-Semitism lurks everywhere in this fast-growing, ethnically mixed city Hitler’s fateful five-year Vienna sojourn is about to start). He is also working in the neurology department of a Viennese hospital where electro-convulsive therapy is still the order of the day. Caveat emptor - If you want candy floss - look elsewhere.Max, a British-Jewish doctor, is a Freud acolyte. My wish was rather to have some more time to explore the places, the times, and to get to know a little more of the intriguing characters. I loved the way both the visuals and story details were gradually unfolded and the characters allowed to evolve. I loved the care taken with settings, camera angles, lighting, the colour balance etc. ![]() It is best not to view and to try to apprehend a grand master painting in the same way as one might set about enjoying a Mickey Mouse cartoon. ![]() The prime value for me in this excellent series is in enjoying the texture of the work. One of the complaints I read was that the story lines were rather too simple, another complained that the series was slow moving. I am hooked, please sir can I have some more? ADDENDUM: On reading some of the critical reviews, I felt I should add a further note to my very brief review in order to help place the series in a little sharper relief. The casting, acting, directing, styling, cinematography, and for the most part the story lines were of a very high quality. It is quietly funny in places and very disturbing in others, the crumbling Empire and undertones of Nazism and not so much the gore are what I found to be the bits that left an aftertaste. It's not popcorn and candy cuisine, and it requires a degree of digesting. ![]() This superb, refreshingly different, historical who-done-it series takes a little bit of work to fully enjoy. Not for the unsophisticated block-buster fans or the action movie addicts.
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