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 Bargan, Simon Hatzl.

A fellowship is only as noble as its intentions, one may look to the ideals of any organisation and believe that it is possible to fit in, to strive to be accepted into the ranks in which opportunities lay and reward follows suit, but in amongst such pursuits we may find that we become a little less whole, that the uniform handed to us fits uncomfortably and the handshake of acceptance is one that crushes the fingers.

There are two ways to look at secret societies in which membership depends on the recipient giving their life willingly to what amounts to a brotherhood in action, one is the type that as the great Groucho Marx understood he would not join if someone like him was wanted as member, the other as a force in which rules, history, honour and secrets are adhered to, even at the cost of a life.

In hard times such societies, across the many folds of the political landscape, can be seen as cloaking themselves in the shadows, there is a penalty involved in the pursuit of membership, and quite often with an element of terror involved, blood will spill.

In the third and final part of the series Vienna Blood, Matthew Beard’s and Jurgen Maurer’s consulting doctor and sceptical detective, Liebermann and Rheinhardt, investigate a nearby military academy, a situation brought on by the attempted suicide of Max Liebermann’s nephew as he deals with the guilt of his participation in a fellow cadet’s initiation ceremony.

The premise of The Lost Child is such that the viewer is urged to feel the distaste that emanates like a skulking virus as it attaches itself on to the unwilling or the sensitive, the sense of loathing that is clear when faced against the backdrop of hostility towards members of Liebermann’s faith in the pre First World War Austro-Hungarian Empire, all of which combines to see the pair fight a system loaded against them, and to which, even if they find the person responsible for a cadet’s death, will mean the ranks of the society within will close around them.

In a series which evokes the imagery and logic of Sherlock Holmes and which uses the proposals and life work of Freud in terms of observation and study in which to capture the truth; and in The Lost Child, that truth is unpalatable, it is one shrouded in the weakness of the collective mindset of the bully, of the aggressive tormentor and the belief that might equals right.

A terrifically written series, Vienna Blood is an unexpected gem of television in 2019.

Ian D. Hall