'Vienna Blood' Finally Confirmed for Season 4, With a New Format

After a six-month delay, Vienna Blood has finally been commissioned for Season 4 by Austria and German public TV stations ORF and ZRF. The series has struggled to establish itself as a hit with American viewers on PBS. It initially debuted in the 10 p.m. ET slot in January 2020, airing directly after Sanditon's first season's episodes, but was hobbled by various factors. Sanditon was already canceled, the two were not an excellent fit audience-wise, and (oh yeah) a pandemic hit days after the Season 1 finale. The series was in limbo for months until it got a second season renewal, and PBS viewers waited two years for Season 2.

Season 1 also suffered from being chopped up into six one-hour episodes to fit PBS' schedule instead of its designed initially three feature-length mysteries. However, the show managed to adjust for that in the second season. What it struggled more to adjust to was lead Matthew Beard, who plays Dr. Max Liebermann, who had zero chemistry with Amelia (Jessica De Gouw), the goy woman he's supposed to fall in love with and leave his fiance, Clara (Luise von Finckh). Season 2 recast Amelia with Lucy Griffiths, but Beard and von Finckh's chemistry still was far better, a distraction from the real bromance between Liebermann and Inspector Oskar Reinhardt (Juergen Maurer).

Season 3 finally managed to square the circle by dropping Amelia from the TV series. Though the mysteries stayed true to the books, the rest departed wholesale, turning the Liebermann-Reinhardt duo into an ensemble team that includes Clara, Therese Lindner (Miriam Hie), Sergeant Haussmann (Josef Ellers), and finding ways to get Max's parents Mendel (Conleth Hill) and Rachel (Amelia Bullmore) and his sister Leah (Charlene McKenna) in on the act. Even making buffoonish Commissioner von Bulow (Raphael von Bargen) was allowed to be helpful. That made the lack of a Season 4 announcement directly following the finale even more disappointing.