Vienna Blood: (Vienna Blood 2)

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Having directed on Seasons 1 and 2 my biggest credo was not to repeat myself. You cannot do the same thing over again. Yes, the two principal characters and their families stayed the same, but I wanted to find new aspects. There are always new stories, new themes. So, I don't feel yet that I'm repeating myself. Love of family, I think… our age and sex and that’s about it. I’m Catholic, he’s Jewish. But I think the Jewish church is the mother church. Oliver Auspitz and Andreas Kamm, co-managing directors of MR Film, say: “The thrilling journey of Max Liebermann and Oscar Reinhardt is ready to continue. In three fantastic new episodes we will watch Max getting more and more involved in his love life alongside his strong friendship with Oscar, who is finally ready to be confronted with his past." When a famous film star dies during the premiere of her new film, Max and Oskar's investigation gets them embroiled in the dark underbelly of stardom and far-right politics. [5]

Fortunately, Freud’s Vienna was made up of many worlds. I was spoilt for choice! The worlds of the opera house, the military academy, the palace, the hospital, and so on. And they really were like worlds in Freud’s time - not just places. The imperial court, for example, used its own dialect. We think of detective fiction as a genre driven by a big central character. But, in reality, almost all of the great fictional detectives operate in distinctive settings. You need a distinctive setting for a big character to get sufficient traction to move the story forward. It's always a great thrill for me to adapt Frank Tallis’s novels because he has this extraordinary understanding of Vienna. He seems to know Vienna better than any British person I've ever met. Frank’s understanding of the detail, the texture, the rhythms, the colour and the flavour of Vienna is extraordinary. So, for me to dive into his novels and be able to adapt them is just an absolute joy. At the same time, I had a new and rather exciting thrill, which was starting one of the episodes from scratch, flying solo and inventing my own story, and that made it very exciting. It's always great to reacquaint with the family. We don't always see each other in between filming but when we re-start it's like we never stopped. It's immediately a lot of talking, a lot of joking. There's just a very easy rhythm between us. In series one Oskar was estranged from his wife Else, and Oskar’s family troubles weighed heavily on his mind. Oskar now seems better able to put the past where he’d like to keep it: more firmly behind him. Mendel Liebermann, Max’s father - Conleth Hill He’s more of a loner, living alone, trying to do his job as good as he can and I think he’s quite successful in his job because he has the natural attitude of a hunter.

Frank Tallis, Author of the Liebermann Novels

There are probably two overarching themes to the series. The first is, anti-Semitism and the rise of a particular kind of German nationalism that eventually metamorphosed into the horrors of Nazism. There were lots of nationalists around in Freud's Vienna and lots of cults with some rather odd beliefs that actually Hitler was exposed to when he was down and out in Vienna and absorbed and eventually incorporated into his pernicious Nazi ideology. That's one of the overarching themes. I suppose the most characteristic feature of the Liebermann family is that they are Jews. They are Viennese Jews in the books and English Jews in the TV series. They are an immigrant family. I wasn't really very conscious of this when I was writing the books, but perhaps on reflection I can see that there is a connection, I'm not Jewish, but I do come from an immigrant family. Frank Tallis isn't my real name. I have a much more foreign sounding name. And I suppose the immigrant experience is something that is very similar wherever you come from, and immigrant families are perhaps more similar than different and have similar preoccupations. The anxiety about fitting in, a certain amount of ambivalence about where you came from, a certain amount of self-consciousness. All of those things are commonalities.

And it's an interesting question: Why was it Vienna at that particular time that was a creative powerhouse? And there are many theories, many ideas, as to why Vienna became preeminent. One of the factors might have been the coffee house culture. Vienna's coffeehouses were places where people met, exchanged ideas from all walks of life, and it was a unique atmosphere. One of the factors that may have influenced that was curiously a housing shortage. Lots of intellectuals of the time were hard up, they had a bed for the night but didn't necessarily have anywhere to go to avoid the cold. And so they went to Vienna's coffeehouses where they talk, exchange ideas, and this was supposed to be very important for the cultivation of a forward-looking and inventive culture where many ideas from different disciplines were being swapped. Red Arrow Studios International has led the co-financing of the series and is the international distributor. Germany’s ZDF and Austria’s ORF are co-production partners and will premiere the show in their respective territories. Other funding partners include National Film Institute Hungary, Televisionfund Austria & TV-Filmfund Vienna I like to spend my evenings with the Lieberman family because they represent a very wholesome society and you can identify with them. They are the mensch part of our story and they bring humour and entertainment, humanity and wit. It’s very dark. That said, there’s a levity to the show which I don’t think necessarily matches the subject matter all the time, which means it’s just enjoyable to watch because it’s not constant murder! Production Interviews Robert Dornhelm, Director The second, and I think perhaps more interesting theme, is that Freud's Vienna was a pre-apocalyptic Vienna in the sense that it was edging towards the First World War. And the First World War was an absolute catastrophe. And they knew that they were heading towards some kind of catastrophe because the Habsburg empire was full of tensions, was fraying at the edges and there was a sense that something bad was coming. And the Viennese had a very curious response to it, in the sense that they were partly nostalgic looking to the past, partly revolutionary looking towards perhaps some new world, but mostly they behave in a kind of fairly irregular and counterintuitive fashion in terms of maybe drinking more champagne, having more balls, having more sexual liaisons and generally sort of partying to the end. And I suppose that curious atmosphere of a world that is approaching an apocalyptic end, and how people respond to that atmosphere was very influential while I was writing the books.Max Liebermann is the star of this series, which is from the crime, history, and psychology genres of fiction. Frank Tallis, who writes the series, is a clinical psychologist, uses his expertise in the psychology field to write the books. He is a psychoanalytic detective in Vienna, Austria, at the turn of the twentieth century.

Endor Productions, MR Film and Red Arrow Studios International announce major new drama Series "Vienna Blood" " (PDF). With each episode we enter a new world, a new part of Vienna we’ve never seen. The first episode of the new series is set in a hotel, and is very much about the politics of the hotel and the different strata - upstairs and downstairs - and the different people that mingle there. It includes the complexities and intrigue and the different, very rich characters who would mix and collide in a Viennese hotel of the period - they were incredibly elegant, beautiful palaces. I guess for anyone who has any profession, there are moments when you can't help but bring your professional life into your personal life. And there is a moment in the series where Max offers advice to Oskar in a way that might be a bit more than friendship, that is sort of based in a psychological understanding. But I think Max is quite good at reigning it in. He knows Oskar doesn't want that. And I think it would be incredibly annoying for a friend to psychoanalyse you all the time! Having just set up his own private practice, we find Max experimenting with Freud's new talking cure and various psychoanalytic techniques. But he’s also still at the hospital, where he works with patients, more interested in the mind than the body. And he still has a relationship with Oskar that he carries through from the first season. I read a great deal of the literature associated with Freud's Vienna when I was writing the books, and I suppose he reflects a particular type that you find in the literature. There were many intense young men with romantic entanglements spending a lot of time in Vienna's famous coffeehouses, talking about philosophy, life, tMax applies his neurological expertise to the case of a retired soldier, Captain Steiner, who is convinced that he is cursed and tortured by vengeful spirits. [5] Rodrigo Herrera Ibarguengoytia, VP Scripted Acquisitions & Co-Productions at Red Arrow Studios International says: “It’s such a pleasure working with MR Film, Endor Productions and the entire creative Vienna Blood team, who continue to outdo themselves each season with gripping new crime cases and more sumptuous locations that fans of the show have come to expect. We can’t wait to bring this much- anticipated new season to viewers around the world.” It is absolutely critical that we get the balance right between a show that ultimately is a thriller, a murder story, but it also has a warmth. We want to be able to hang out with these two guys, we get to know their relationship, we love their banter and it's critical that this is right at the centre of it all, so the show is not too forbidding. The worlds they go into are incredibly dark. The first murder we encounter at the beginning of Episode Seven is really brutal. All murders are brutal but that one is particularly pernicious. It's important we find the heart of the show too.

Oskar is a street cop, but we know he's also a man with a big heart. He has this very sad past with his family. His daughter has died, his wife has left him. So, it's great to see him for the first time in this series open his heart and begin a new relationship with a new woman. That was great fun. Juergen had a great time acting it. And I had a great time writing it. Amelia is a forensic scientist who has moved from London to Vienna to pursue her work because she thinks it will be an environment that’s a bit more conducive to her progressing. Amelia assists Max and Oskar with their detective-ing! Max's nephew suffers a breakdown after the drowning of a fellow cadet at a military academy. Max suspects foul play. [5]A crime story is a puzzle but while you're watching a thriller there's this wonderful vicarious thrill of watching somebody solve the puzzle, but at the same time, experiencing the threat and the danger through somebody else's point of view. I think that's what makes crime drama universally popular. I would say Clara has quite a long development across the two seasons. From this young girl who is looking for something that makes her happy and she is not so sure what it is she needs - is it marriage? Is it Max? Either way, she becomes a woman in the first season - she becomes more grown up. I think what really makes her character in the show is the woman who tries to be somebody and is not so sure who she is. When we first met him, Max was on the path to marry vivacious Clara, but meeting Amelia Lydgate changed all that. Max’s attraction to the dark side of the human brain impacts both on his interest in Vienna’s criminals and his relationships. The deeper Max journeys into other people’s madness, the less he’ll know himself. Oskar Rheinhardt, Police Inspector - Juergen Maurer