Please Save 'Vienna Blood': A Cri de Cœur

Vienna Blood is (probably) dead; long live Vienna Blood. The pre-Great War murder mystery series featuring the highly effective odd couple of young British Freudian Dr. Max Liebermann and veteran Viennese homicide detective Inspector Oskar Rheinhardt’s fourth season wrapped up on PBS at the end of January, and though the series’s cancellation hasn’t been formally announced, we here at Telly Visions have been bracing ourselves for unwelcome news on that front. The show’s production company, Endor, closed up shop in 2024, and as of this writing, no new home for the series has emerged to rescue it.

Rescuing a show after it is canceled at one network is an idea with some precedent. Thus far, these rescues have mainly involved comedies like Brooklyn Nine-Nine (picked up by NBC after being canceled at Fox) and Girls5Eva (rescued up by Netflix after being canceled at Peacock); however, there are some genre shows that have benefitted from the practice as well. Some recent examples include The Expanse (picked up by Prime Video after being canceled at SyFy), Agatha Raisin (scooped up by Acorn TV after Sky TV dropped it), and Sanditon (rescued by PBS Masterpiece after being canceled at ITV). I think it’s time for Apple TV+ to become the hero that crime show lovers need and deserve.

If Vienna Blood 1.0 is headed for the chopping block, it’s not due to plummeting ratings. It just needs a new home at a functioning production company. Apple TV+ has *checks notes* slightly more money than God, and that’s just what they’ve got as cash on hand, so they should be pretty stable, business-wise, for at least a few more years. They have done a bit of belt-tightening in the last six months (more due to social pressure than actual need), and more austerity is on the way, but Vienna Blood isn’t a particularly lavish production.