Liverpool Sound and Vision Rating 9/10
Cast: Matthew Beard, Jürgen Maurer, Alexander Absenger, Amelia Bullmore, Josef Ellers, Serge Falck, May Garzon, Lucy Griffiths, Miriam Hie, Conleth Hill, Nicolas Matthews, Charlene McKenna, David Oberkogler, Loenhard Srajer, Erwin Steinhauer, Florian Stetter, Florian Teichmeister, Raphael von Bergen, Luise von Finckh, Johannes Zeiler.
Two sides of a coin, both requiring faith, both dealing with a rationale that to others is best avoided unless you want to feel as though you have been personally defiled, had your mind turned, been instructed that your thoughts are against their teachings; such is the arguments over religion and psychotherapy that these could be the closing statements from either study about the other. In pious hands they can be a force for good, in the palms of the self-serving, the manipulative, they are human equivalent of Darkness Rising, the platform for evil to be committed in their name.
The third and final full length feature from Vienna Blood’s second series brings into confrontation the choices made between faith in God and that of the human mind, and when confronted with both, it is easy to see that the manner of wrong-doing, of committing sins, of jealousy, of murder lays not in the persuasive thought, but in the damage done by the one without any faith at all except in the material.
Charting the progress of certain characters as they start to show their future intent serves Vienna Blood well, and with the backdrop of murder in the home of the spiritually faithful, and the question of faith attacking faith on the lips of those with a greater axe to grind as the world teeters towards not only war, but the manner of destruction it wills upon a race of people, it comes that Darkness Rising is a perfect ending for what has been an illuminating and sincere series.
It has already been noted that the combination of Matthew Beard and Jürgen Maurer work superbly well together in the roles of Max Liebermann and Oskar Rheinhardt, the energy, laid back, cooperative, and thoughtful, is every bit as dynamic as those who require shock and awe in their lives to carry out their on-screen friendship. This dynamic is the driving force behind the success of the series, it requires depth not superficiality, and like the most genuine of friendships it is mutually beneficial; something that comes across with insight as the pair take on those to whom friendship is born out of greed and self-motivation.
Darkness Rising is a sensation, it brings together the awaited confrontation between faith and the study of psychotherapy against a future backdrop of a war to come when both will be tested to their limit.
Calm, collected, and sincere, Vienna Blood is one of the great finds on television in the last few years.
Ian D. Hall