Vienna Blood: My Rating 5
Freud Meets Sherlock?
Vienna Blood is a darn good show. The combination of sometimes deep, dark detection with Freudian psychoanalysis is right up my alley. (My dissertation turned into Plato and Freud: Statesmen of the Soul.) That the series – now in its fourth season on PBS (and PBS Passport) – is filmed in Vienna and Budapest is a bonus. The first rate cast includes Matthew Beard as Dr. Max Liebermann, a student of Sigmund Freud, and the superlative Jürgen Maurer, as the dogged, scrupulously honest Detective Oskar Rheinhardt.
The series, set in the early 1900s, is based on the Liebermann novels by Frank Tallis, an English author and clinical psychologist. The Liebermanns are a British Jewish family living in Vienna. Reinhardt at first finds Liebermann annoying but comes to rely on his insights into the complexity of human personality and dynamics. (The show is in the reverse Sherlock/Watson tradition in which the sidekick provides much of the smarts, although in this case the Inspector is no simpleton.) The episodes mine the various plots offered by early 20th Century antisemitism and the intrigues of the gradual crumbling of Hapsburg rule of the Austrian-Hungarian empire. Serbian plots abound. (The assassination of Austrian Grand Duke Franz Ferdinand in Sarajevo in June 1914 set off what became WWI and ended the empire. I once stood at the very spot from which Bosnian Serb Gavrilo Princip fired the shots that killed the Archduke and his wife.)
The core of the show is Reinhardt. He must deal with a chief who despises him, one sullen subordinate and another whose father is the chief of police, and crimes that sometimes lead deep into the politics of empire. (Not all of his superiors actually want the crime solved, the same problem Detective Zen faces in modern day Rome.) Reinhardt is also a lonely man who keeps moving forward against currents only he can see. Liebermann, the young Freudian, helps while himself remaining confused by love.
It’s nice to find another great mystery on PBS (which divides each 90 minute episode into two parts). I give it a solid 5 rating.
PS: The last season of Vera is on Britbox now and perhaps on your local PBS station.
