The First Look at 'Vienna Blood' Season 4 Puts the Women on Equal Footing

It's been nearly two years since Vienna Blood Season 3 debuted on PBS in January 2023. The series, based on the Max Liebermann novels by Frank Tallis, has been an on-again/off-again wintertime mystery series for public television, originally debuting Season 1 in January 2020, only to have Season 2 delayed by lockdowns, finally arriving in 2022. However, though Season 3 turned up only a year later, it was clear the series was at a crossroads. The feature-length episodes (which PBS split into 45minute installments) had run through all of Tallis' stories that he'd initially published between 2005-2011, plus the 2018 belated addition that he published after the show was picked up for series, and unless he wrote more, there was no more material to adapt.

It was a tragic moment because the show had begun firing on all cylinders in the final installments after two seasons of trying to find its voice. The stories leaned into the incredibly talented ensemble cast who played Max Liebermann's (Matthew Beard) family and friends, working all of them into the mysteries he was solving. It made the show more like a Grantchester, one where viewers cared as much about the lives and drama of the Jewish community in Vienna in the years before the Great War as they did the cases Max solved along with his unlikely BFF, Inspector Oskar Rheinhardt (Juergen Maurer).

However, the production company did manage to squeeze one more renewal out of the series before it eventually went under earlier in 2024, with one story to close what will almost certainly be the show's final season. That season has now begun airing on BBC 2, and the first images from it once again show how much the series has become an ensemble endeavor.