The first episode of Vienna Blood presents us with a mystery. A woman is found dead inside a locked room – an apartment used to hold seances, which isn’t that surprising as the year is 1906 – with a suicide note nearby. Right from the start, things don’t add up: the note seems fake and the bullet wound doesn’t actually contain a bullet. There are no witnesses, no motive, nothing in the way of clues, and even the identity of the victim is in doubt. That’s enough to get any crime series off to a compelling start, but Vienna Blood has more cards to play.
For one, there’s the setting. Vienna in 1906 was one of the most exciting and forward-looking cities in the world, the capital of the still-thriving Austro-Hungarian Empire and a melting pot for all the varied cultures of Europe. It was at the centre of the arts and culture during the Belle Époque, a place where Europe’s turbulent politics was bubbling away before the First World War killed millions and redrew the map. Vienna Blood takes full advantage of the city’s rich culture, name-checking Gustav Mahler, Gustav Klimt, and Sigmund Freud.
Detective Inspector Oskar Rheinhardt (Jürgen Maurer) and Max Liebermann (Matthew Beard) Source: SBS
As the series begins, Oskar’s bosses have decided he should allow himself to be shadowed during his latest investigation by Max Liebermann (Matthew Beard), a gifted young medical student with an interest in the workings of the criminal mind. The twist here is that Liebermann has been sneaking off to take in the lectures of one Sigmund Freud. His crime-solving superpower is the power of psychology.
Source: SBS
Across the six episodes of the first series, Max and Oskar are faced with a range of crimes that mix the issues of the era with the mysteries of the human mind. Racism and fascism rear their ugly heads, as do psycho-sexual slayings and sinister symbolism. Freud might have famously said that sometimes a cigar is just a cigar, but there’s a string of references here to snakes that are pretty clearly gesturing towards something a bit more sexual (especially when one is stolen from a zoo and later found butchered – near a statue of Mozart no less).
Source: SBS
If at times it seems like everyone around Max seems driven by impulses they barely understand - apart from Oskar, who’s grumpiness seemingly runs bone deep (though he’s burying some personal pain of his own) – that’s a big part of this series’ appeal. Vienna Blood’s world is one where our understanding of the human mind is still exciting and new, as shown by the parade of potential suspects leading double lives or hiding dark secrets.
That might sound a little Freudian, but that’s the point. Killers or not, the residents of turn-of-the-century Vienna are the people who inspired Freud, and through him solved – or at least, gave us a few more clues – to the biggest mystery of them all: the human mind.
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