Hunt for poisoner after Freudian slip
TV PICK OF THE WEEK
Vienna Blood: The Melancholy Countess
This psychological period crime drama makes a welcome return for a second series.
Set in Vienna around the start of the last century, the story follows a know-it-all junior doctor, Max Liebermann (Matthew Beard), and a taciturn detective, Detective Inspector Oskar Rheinhardt (Juergen Maurer), who form an unlikely crimesolving partnership.
Vienna Blood is written by Sherlock writer Steve Thompson and adapted from the best-selling Max Liebermann novels, and there is a touch of Sherlock about it, which is no bad thing.
We’re transported back to autumn, 1907. When a depressed Hungarian countess is found drowned in the bath of her lavish hotel suite, it looks like suicide.
Intense scrutiny falls on her psychoanalyst, Max Liebermann, who asked the countess to stop taking her prescribed medicine and start taking a course of Freud’s talking cure with himself. Investigating officer Rheinhardt teams up with the disgraced doctor to solve the riddle of the countess’ death and clear Max’s professional reputation.
A post-mortem reveals that the countess was poisoned, which turns Max and Oskar’s attention to Oktav Hauke, a young second lieutenant with a reputation for dubious relationships with rich, older women. When Max’s private practice is vandalised and transcripts of his meetings with the countess are stolen, it seems that Max knows more than he realises.
Max searches for clues to the identity of the murderer, but it will take more than understanding the source of the countess’ dreams to unlock this case.