Vienna Blood: (Vienna Blood 2)

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When I write the viewer I imagine watching it is me. I write things that I enjoy and I would want to watch I think. I guess different writers write for different people but I don’t, I write stuff that I think I would enjoy watching. When I used to write plays, occasionally I used to write them with my mother in mind, because if I put swearing in she’d always complain. I was a playwright 15 years ago and if there was a lot of swearing in it, I could hear my mother’s voice saying "Stephen it’s not clever to swear" and I’d take some of the swear words out! But most of the time I just write for myself. The key consideration for me to do a film is the script. If the script is any good or has a little bit of originality and is not just a rehash of another police drama, I’m interested. Police dramas in general don’t interest me, but this one, set in Vienna at the turn of the century, is very reminiscent of our times today, similar themes, subjects of nationalism, intolerance, war... that interests me. And to make a historic journey dealing with problems of our time is fascinating. Oh yes. The thing I miss most about seeing patients - I’m a full-time writer now - is the detective work. Most psychological problems are quite straightforward, but complex cases require detection skills: identifying clues, following leads, digging deep for answers. Retrieving a repressed memory that explains a symptom is analogous to the culprit being exposed by Poirot in the drawing room! It can be as thrilling and as intellectually satisfying as the last scene in an Agatha Christie. A final piece of a puzzle falling into place. 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. Max is very intellectual. He's immersed in his science and the world of crime. But when we see him with his family, it grounds Max in such a joyous way. The Liebermann family have their own little rituals, their own sense of fun, their own sense of humour. This beautiful relationship between Max and his father that the two actors play, this gentle ribbing, this gentle humour that they have - expresses Max's humanity perhaps better than anything else in the show. I think that's critical. Max may be the brain of the show. But when we see him with his family, that's when we understand its heart.

Talking cures and hysterics - exploring the darkness of men’s souls. Are you really sure what you’re getting into, Max? Is it really the career for a gentleman?” Vienna Blood is a British-Austrian procedural drama television series set in Vienna, Austria, in the 1900s. Based on the Liebermann novels by Frank Tallis, the series follows Max Liebermann ( Matthew Beard), a doctor and student of Sigmund Freud, as he assists Police Detective Oskar Rheinhardt ( Juergen Maurer). By providing psychological insights into the subjects’ motives, they investigate disturbing murders with success. A continuing sub-theme is the growing anti-Semitism against the Liebermann family. Max is a member of a liberal Jewish family in Leopoldstadt, a traditional Jewish district, while Oskar, a lapsed Catholic, is based at that district's police precinct. Each book in the series takes us to a different side of Vienna. In this second series we get monastic life, a high-class hotel and the world of imperial politics. What elements are you looking for when you decide on the settings of your books? Actors, in general, always put a lot of themselves into the parts they play, so Clara has a lot of me. My whole interpretation of how she behaves in a world where women didn’t have as many rights as they do now, is something that comes from me, Luise. That is also what really makes her character so flirty and fun - because she never behaves like a woman during that time. Clara didn’t grow up with a father; he died very early and she was with her mum. So she never had somebody to give her boundaries, and as a result, she is somehow always a bit ‘too much’ for a woman of that time. I think that’s something I would also do, or how I am also sometimes - I’m a bit too much!Max (20s) lean, attractive, is a middle-class English Jew who moved to Austria in his teens. As a junior doctor Max fell under the spell of the new science of the day and studied neurology. Fixated by the idea of analysing psychopaths at close hand, Max convinced the Viennese police to let him observe their work, and paired up with Oskar Rheinhardt.

Max 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]The real Liebermanns and the people playing the Liebermanns are actually quite a different bunch. The Liebermanns are very traditional, conservative and bourgeoise - apart from Max who is pushing the envelope, questioning all kinds of things. But the people who play the Liebermanns are not particularly formal or conservative or bourgeois. The real Liebermanns are an English, Jewish family who’ve gone to Vienna. The actors playing the Liebermanns are actually two Irish people - Charlene who plays Leah, and Conleth who plays Mendel. And then me, I’m a bit bourgeois. And there’s Matt who is from the north of England. We are not how we appear. Mortal Mischief: (Liebermann Papers 1), Arrow Books, ISBN 978-0099471288; U.S. title: A Death in Vienna, Random House, ISBN 978-0812977639 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. Cross-fertilisation became the engine of Viennese creativity. Freud borrowed the techniques of poets and novelists in the service of science when he wrote his early case studies. Then, poets and novelists borrowed Freudian ideas in the service of art. Studies in Hysteria became a reference work, not only for doctors, but for authors, playwrights, and theatre directors.