Vienna Blood review – so much like Sherlock it seems like a spoof

This fin de siècle murder mystery about a maverick detective and his doctor sidekick is laughably Holmesian – but enjoyably absurd For someone who professes to be into the new-fangled science of what makes people tick, I’m not sure it was the cleverest move to get into a rickety carriage on a fairground ferris wheel with a psychopathic killer. Still, the image of junior doctor Max Liebermann hanging from his fingertips over the city of Vienna after being hurled from the door, proved a thrilling, if completely avoidable – “hypnosis would be easier” – end to the first episode of Vienna Blood (BBC Two).It is set in Vienna in 1906, where gruff detective Oskar Rheinhardt (Juergen Maurer) is told that a young doctor – Liebermann (Matthew Beard), a fan of Freud – will be shadowing him to learn about “the psychopathy of the criminal mind”. “Catchy,” deadpans Rheinhardt. The three-part series will be compared, unavoidably, to Sherlock: its writer, Steve Thompson, adapting the Frank Tallis novels, was also a Sherlock scriptwriter. But Liebermann’s character study of his reluctant new mentor is so Holmesian it feels like a spoof. For the first half an hour, it feels as if the makers are failing to repress their Sherlock complex – the jaunty camera angles, the hyperreal look, the jangly music – until it starts to relax into itself. Continue reading…
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