INTERVIEW: ‘Vienna Blood’ returns with a psychological look at murder
Photo: Matthew Beard and Juergen Maurer star in Vienna Blood on PBS. Photo courtesy of PBS / Provided by press site with permission.
Vienna Blood, the PBS series starring Matthew Beard and Juergen Maurer, is set in the tumultuous times of the early 20th century in Vienna. There is a flourishing of the arts, but there’s also a rise in nationalism and anti-Semitism. Amidst the historic surroundings, Dr. Max Liebermann (Beard) and Detective Inspector Oskar Rheinhardt (Maurer) join their efforts to solve a series of head-scratching and terrifying murder cases in the European capital.
Robert Dornhelm directed the very first episode of Vienna Blood during its first season, and now he’s back to direct each of the three episodes of the second season, which kicks off Sunday, Jan. 9 at 10 p.m. on PBS
“The whole creative team was family, and it was fun,” Dornhelm said about his decision to return for more episodes of Vienna Blood. “But the most fun was the two actors, the two principal actors, enjoying how they became so close to each other. … Matthew is to begin with a shy man, and for him to be acquainted and feel at home in Vienna took a little bit. But once he was out of the shell, the whole thing flourished, and it was a joy how the two had the banter and the humor, which originally wasn’t there. The original script had way less humor.”
The scripts for the series come courtesy of Steve Thompson, who worked off the original novels by Frank Tallis. The stories deal a lot with this unique time period, which includes the build-up to World War I and the proliferation of the arts scene. There is also a lot of heady psychology talked about because of Liebermann’s expertise.
“I didn’t want to do all three [episodes],” the director said about joining the series for season two. “There was another director who I would have been very happy to do the last one, which I felt very uncomfortable doing, and then the producer said, ‘But how should that work?’ Because we are shooting totally out of order, all three at the same time. Indeed that would have been an impossible deed. Would he have sat next to me? ‘OK, I’ll take over, that’s for my episode.’ Practically it didn’t work. I wish it would have because it would have taken some weight off my shoulders because it was COVID time that we were shooting. I just recovered from COVID, and the idea to juggle three movies with different themes, different casts …”
For example, Dornhelm needed to shoot all of the scenes that took place at the police station together, ditto for the mental health institution. They were unable to come and go to these places in Vienna because of the timing and budgeting concerns. The plus side of being the only director for season two (what British audiences call series two) is that Dornhelm got to work with the actors more closely. Plus, there was the chance to go deeper with the research he conducted into the time period they were trying to depict.
“I grew up in Vienna,” said Dornhelm, an Oscar nominee for the 1970s documentary The Children of Theatre Street. “I think it’s a very, very interesting time, full of contradictions. On one side you have the arts exploding and getting rid of tradition and inventing atonal music and modern art. … Many of the important writers became war mongers and wished for the first world war to come and clear the air. We’re talking 1910-1914. Many brilliant writers of the time were blinded by this desire to clear the air, which led to the first world war.”
He added these sentiments about the value of this research: “Not everything has to be in the film, but it’s in the subtext. It’s in the way we behave and act. The fact that we know it, it shows somehow. We feel it, I hope.”
By John Soltes / Publisher / John@HollywoodSoapbox.com
Vienna Blood, starring Matthew Beard and Juergen Maurer, returns to PBS Sunday, Jan. 9 at 10 p.m. Click here for more information.
