BTS: Endor swansong - Vienna Blood Season 4

The fourth series of Vienna Blood (2 x 90’) – written by Steve Thompson (Sherlock, Prime Target, Deep State,) and based on the Liebermann novels by Frank Tallis – is now on BBC iPlayer.

Matthew Beard (The Imitation Game, Dracula, Magpie Murders) and Juergen Maurer (Vorstadtweiber, Tatort) reprising their roles as crime-fighting duo Doctor Max Liebermann and Detective Inspector Oskar Rheinhardt.

Endor Productions and MR Film partnered with ORF, ZDF, BBC, PBS and Red Arrow Studios International. Other funding partners include FISAplus, Film in Austria (ABA), Televisionfund Austria, TV-Filmfund Vienna and Land Niederösterreich.

The show is a swansong for Endor which is closing after 26 years.

The producers of Vienna Blood are Jez Swimer for Endor; Oliver Auspitz, Andreas Kamm and Catrin Strasser for MR Film; commissioning editors are Klaus Lintschinger and Kerstin Bertsch for ORF and Wolfgang Feindt for ZDF; executive producers are Steve Thompson; Carlo Dusi for Endor; Rodrigo Herrera Ibarguengoytia for Red Arrow Studios International and Hilary Bevan Jones.

Filmed in English and on location in Vienna, series four is directed by Umut Dağ (House of Promises, Breaking Point).

Interview with Umut Dağ, Director, Vienna Blood Season 4

Where do we find our characters at the start of the fourth series?

We begin one year after the last season. Max comes back from America after a big lecture tour and is now a well-known neurologist. Oskar has made mistakes as a police officer. They are both in different situations in their lives and haven’t had much to do with each other for quite a long time so they almost begin again but with a different feeling.

How did you approach directing this series of Vienna Blood?

As a director and creative, your approach is always to progress and do better. We wanted to keep as much as we could of the environment that we all know and love from the previous season but also add a little bit more to get a fresh feeling and be closer to the characters. I hope the audience will feel it.

One theme in these episodes is gambling. How do you explore this?

Gambling is a very generous subject because you have all these rich visuals: you have roulette tables, cards, money, and chips. We wanted to enhance the richness of the casino. But of course, gambling is not always a good thing. If you get too into it then you can get lost. It is very intriguing and compelling to explore the different sides of gambling.

In terms of the composed music for series four. What were you looking for?

The main thing for me always is the authenticity of the emotion and acting. That and the tension in the scene between characters and in the story. If this is right, the music will help everything around it and shouldn’t be something on the surface which flattens everything. Roman Kariolou [Vienna Blood’s composer] is a great companion to work with.

You have some fabulous locations in Vienna Blood. Were there any places it was particularly important to film?

In the first episode we began with the Riesenrad and if you think of Vienna you think of the Riesenrad and St. Stephen’s Cathedral. It would be a shame to have four seasons of Vienna Blood and not show St. Stephen’s. Of course it’s not easy. We had to be very creative about decision making there but I think it will be intriguing, very suspenseful and thrilling for the viewer. If you take a moment and zoom out, you’ll see the picture and feel the scale of it. But hopefully the audience will forget it‘s a special thing to be in St. Stephen’s because the story is not about exteriors it’s about our characters.

How does it feel to come back to a show you’ve worked on before?

Season four is a very special thing of course because you know all the characters. You know all the actors and the team and you grow together. You’re part of everything. To do justice to this big show is a great responsibility, to do it in a way that everyone, the audience, especially our fans, will be happy with, is the biggest weight on my shoulders.

Interview with executive producer Steve Thompson

One theme in these episodes is gambling. What drew you to the theme?

Frank Tallis [author of The Liebermann Papers] uses gambling and a casino in his world. There are so many cultures and subcultures within the city itself. I think one of the things about Vienna Blood is that every season, every episode, has its own very distinct flavour. We go to a different part of Vienna and we peel back the surface of something we’ve not seen before – a hotel, a monastery, a boy’s school, the opera.

I began this season’s process saying, “tell me about a culture we’ve not been to”. I had a long conversation with Andreas, our Austrian producer, about gambling and Baden just outside Vienna, where there was a famous casino and how at that time, it had become part of the lifestyle of the rich and famous.

This is a show about psychology and the psychology behind gambling is fascinating. I think Max says at one point in the drama, that gamblers put themselves on the line all the time because they feel they deserve to be punished. I thought this was a world that was both very glamorous and unlocked a psychological question we’ve not addressed before.

When you set out to include a casino, did you have other films in your mind as points of inspiration?

I confess, I watched one or two other movies set in casinos when I was writing this. I did watch Scorsese’s movie Casino which I’ve seen before but it was thrilling to watch again. Largely because of the way he films the actual gambling. It has a ritualistic quality to it. I think the cinematography, the way he films the gambling tables was instructive. You know that gambling is basically a silent pursuit, watching five people around a table in silence make calculations and decisions in their head. So you need to use the camera to explore and find the drama for you. That was very useful.

Can you talk a little bit about setting a drama not long before WW1?

This story takes place in 1909 but anybody who watches it will be conscious, I think, of the events of 1914 and the start of World War One. Vienna at that time was a very beautiful and glittering society. But we, the audience, are watching this world, knowing that it’s fragile and that in a matter of years it’s going to be broken and the world is going to be destroyed by the advent of the world war. Whilst we’re tuning in for murder mysteries and adventures, we go with Max and Oscar into new worlds. But at the same time this one does have a darker edge.

How much do you enjoy the musical elements of Vienna Blood?

Music is a critical ingredient of what we do and it’s always thrilling to make that part of the tapestry.

Film Two [in the first season] was set in the opera and the opera taking place was The Magic Flute. Filming was a wonderful experience. I watched the soloists one after another, come on and sing two or three lines of an aria. The director would then yell ‘Cut!’ and they’d traipse offstage and somebody else would come on and sing two more lines of another aria. That day we got this strange and rather fractured version of The Magic Flute with these brilliant soloists who performed for us but only getting to sing tiny snatches. At one point, the singer who was playing the Queen of the Night sang her famous aria and for the rest of the day, the entire crew were wandering around the building, humming, or singing it.

Everybody. The sparks, camera team…couldn’t get The Magic Flute out of their heads.