Liverpool Sound and Vision Rating * * * *
Cast: Matthew Beard, Jurgen Maurer, Luise Von Finckh, Jessica De Gouw, Conleth Hill, Amelia Bullmore, Charlene McKenna, Oliver Stokowski, Raphaek Von Bargen, Simon Hatzl.
Modern investigation into murder and criminal action has moved on in the last one hundred years to such a pace where now we arguably rely on technology with more certainty than we do with the greatest resource available to us, that of the mind.
The difference between detection that relies on the equipment and the ability to monitor every movement of the populace so that a detective can say with certainty who the culprit was, but what can not be attributed without the aid of intellect, is the reason why, and for that we as a society should not forget the pioneering work of those who created a science out of thought and digging deep into the art of psychoanalysis.
Television detective programmes have in recent times for the most part relied on the ever-increasing availability of technology to persuade the viewer that a crime committed can be solved by the machine, a recording proves that someone was in the vicinity of a murder, but it doesn’t tell you why and that is where the neuro science is arguably at the forefront of the way a detective programme should be looked upon as the most intriguing and gripping.
The hidden truth employed in the series Vienna Blood is one that sits somewhere between Poirot and Sherlock Holmes, based on the observation of the person rather than watching hours of video; truth does not come neatly, it is to be given by deduction rather than the principle of confrontation and in the opening act of Vienna Blood –The Last Seance, it is truth that lays in the hands of Doctor Max Liebermann and Detective Oskar Rheinhardt.
Truth can be an illusion, one that can be fabricated to fit the times, as well as the people living within what they perceive to be greatness, of standards befitting the civilised and the gentile, and yet under the gowns of silk paraded and the air of culture that Vienna showed to the world at the turn of the century, lay the truth of the decadence of Empire and the shadows that inhabited its core. Anti-Semitism was, like today, on the march, but it was swept under the covers, not showing its ugly face, just being bold enough to suggest that families like the Liebermann’s could only prosper if they towed a certain line.
It is in the mind that the truth prevails and as the nobility of the era is shown for what it is, a place where someone’s opinion believes it has the right to murder, where a reputation knows nothing other than it needs to be preserved there is the abuse of self and it is framed in what is an excellent opening to a series.
Vienna Blood has all the hallmarks of a stimulating detective series, one that isn’t afraid to analyse rather than show the world to the viewers.
Ian D. Hall