BBC 2 | ★★✩✩✩

Feeling guilty when having to write a negative review is an occupational hazard for a critic who’s Jewish, and especially after having having made some TV and written some shows myself, I understand how no-one sets out to make something not great. Fortunately though, with a title like Vienna Blood, it’s somehow easier to stick the knife in.
Adapted from the Liebermann Papers series of novels, the first series was a big pre-Covid hit for BBC Two as it followed the eponymous student of Freud utilising the recently birthed skills of psychoanalysis, to solve crimes in the dying days of the Austro-Hungarian Empire. It passed me by at the time, but returning now for a second run of three extended episodes, I dived straight into the mystery of The Melancholy Countess. Maybe dived is the wrong word as it suggests necessary depth. Waded? I paddled into the mystery.
Initially it was good sign that the episodes seem relatively self-contained, which in an era of intricate plots spanning across years of storytelling, is a nice throwback to the days of Columbo. There is meant to be a theme of growing antisemitism against the Liebermann family, but the closest this episode gets is someone scornfully uttering “The Freudian” like a Corbynite saying “North London Elite.” Overall though, with only a few moments here or there alluding to love interests, a disparaging boss, and previous cases, make for an easy dip-in. Conversely, the lack of clever execution, or the charisma of someone like Peter Falk, make it all too easy to dip-out again, and stay out.
The two leads are mostly fine; the very young-looking Matthew Beard as Max Liebermann, think Doogie Howser M.D. if you’re up on your 90s American TV references, and Juergen Maurer as Detective Rheinhardt, who’s so distractingly growly you’ll wish Freud had instead directed his energies to inventing strepsils. But some of the supporting cast? Wow. They’re so hammy, merely mentioning them risks making the JC not kosher.
The dated direction does no favours to the beautiful setting of the Vienna of 1907, and with various bellboys running around, the effect is like watching Grand Budapest Hotel shot on VHS. The principle problem though is the plot, and how it ties to the core concept. Psychological insight to catch criminals may successfully drive the action in Silence of the Lambs or Mindhunter, but here, any revelations of the mind seemingly originate from a skim read of The Beginner’s Guide to Freud. “People’ll do anything for their kids. The Countess was guilty about something. The Countess must’ve had a secret kid!”
As the riddle unravels, revelations that are meant to come from previous connections, clues, or avenues explored, appear instead so leftfield it feels like tennis balls randomly being lobbed at Max’s head.
After an hour and a half of this, eventually the suspects are whittled down, and when the random culprit randomly appears and kills themselves before one of the most cringeworthy and unlikely lines I’ve ever heard uttered, I was left jealous they’d managed to escape early.