![]() ![]() The sleuths arrange another seance, presumably – though it’s not clear – to pretend to contact the dead medium, and flush out one of the other attendees, a wealthy banker, Heinrich Holderlein, whose wife makes him go to this sort of thing. But it’s not Braun – the killer is an adulterer with a reputation to lose, and anyway, Braun soon ends up dead. It is cheesy, but their relationship is developing so nicely I’ll let them off. “Welcome to the case, doctor,” says Rheinhardt back to Liebermann, when they catch him. Is the killer Otto Braun, one of the men they track down who attended the seance? There is a good rooftop chase that makes him look guilty. “Find the father of this child, he’s your killer,” he tells the experienced older detective, who inexplicably fails to thank him sarcastically for the suggestion. Back to the morgue where his theory is confirmed. Goodness, he’s cocky, under that cool demeanour. ![]() “Welcome to the case, Inspector,” says the doctor. Liebermann is implausibly good at this: he points out that the woman’s apartment is “like a stage set” (they realise she holds seances), and is puzzled by the absence of clothes in her wardrobe, until he makes the giant leap that she must have been pregnant, her clothes all taken to be altered by a seamstress. Matthew Beard and Jessica de Gouw in Vienna Blood. ![]() For the first half an hour, it feels as if the makers are failing to repress their Sherlock complex – the jaunty camera angles, the hyperreal look, the jangly music – until it starts to relax into itself. But Liebermann’s character study of his reluctant new mentor is so Holmesian it feels like a spoof. The three-part series will be compared, unavoidably, to Sherlock: its writer, Steve Thompson, adapting the Frank Tallis novels, was also a Sherlock scriptwriter. It is set in Vienna in 1906, where gruff detective Oskar Rheinhardt (Juergen Maurer) is told that a young doctor – Liebermann (Matthew Beard), a fan of Freud – will be shadowing him to learn about “the psychopathy of the criminal mind”. Still, the image of junior doctor Max Liebermann hanging from his fingertips over the city of Vienna after being hurled from the door, proved a thrilling, if completely avoidable – “hypnosis would be easier” – end to the first episode of Vienna Blood (BBC Two). To resolve the dilemma, he must entertain the unthinkable - risking opprobrium and accusations of cowardice.For someone who professes to be into the new-fangled science of what makes people tick, I’m not sure it was the cleverest move to get into a rickety carriage on a fairground ferris wheel with a psychopathic killer. The treatment of a patient suffering from paranoia erotica (a delusion of love) and his own fascination with the enigmatic Englishwoman Amelia Lydgate raises doubts concerning the propriety of his imminent marriage. Against this backdrop of mystery and terror, Liebermann struggles with his own demons. At first, the killer's mind seems impenetrable - his behaviour and cryptic clues impervious to psychoanalytic interpretation however, gradually, it becomes apparent that an extraordinary and shocking rationale underlies his actions. The investigation draws them into the sphere of Vienna's secret societies - a murky underworld of German literary scholars, race theorists, and scientists inspired by the new evolutionary theories coming out of England. Detective Inspector Oskar Rheinhardt summons a young disciple of Freud - his friend Dr Max Liebermann - to assist him with the case. Vicious mutilation, a penchant for arcane symbols, and a seemingly random choice of victim are his most distinctive peculiarities. In the grip of a Siberian winter in 1902, a serial killer in Vienna embarks upon a bizarre campaign of murder. ![]()
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