Perilous plot: 'Vienna Blood' returns with double murder investigation that shakes the city's core

It’s time to travel back to 1900s Vienna with Max Liebermann and Oskar Rheinhardt.

The psychoanalyst and inspector return for the fourth season of the Masterpiece series, “Vienna Blood.”

The four-part season kicks off at 9:30 p.m. Sunday, Jan. 5, on New Mexico PBS, channel 5.1. It is also available to stream on the PBS app.

A new episode will be released on Sundays through Jan. 26.

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Season four finds the unlikely detective duo in Vienna in 1909, where the double murder of a senior public official and an arms dealer in police custody has shaken the city to its core.

Freudian psychoanalyst Liebermann, played by Matthew Beard, has only just returned from a lecture tour in America when Inspector Rheinhardt, played by Juergen Maurer, asks for help in what could be the most dangerous case of their careers.

Working together on an increasingly perilous investigation, Liebermann and Rheinhardt uncover a conspiracy that leads to the heart of the government.

Season three ended with a cliffhanger, which is rare for the series, Beard said.

“Well, I don’t even want to say, because I don’t want to give anything away about this, but the villain in this one is so involved in the story throughout. It’s not some anonymous distant foe,” Beard said. “Also, it’s revealed towards the end that they also have a connection to the past of ‘Vienna Blood’ and earlier seasons, which we also haven’t done before. And also we got this incredible actress to play that part, who’s done lots of amazing work. So we were very blessed with her as a villain. And I think she enjoyed it too because she got to tag us all along for a while and then pull the rug from under it. So it’s always fun to play those scenes where you get to see the other side of her.”

The new season does have storylines that affect the friendship between Liebermann and Rheinhardt, Beard said.

The new season has big spoilers, he added.

“But I think where we leave Max and Oskar at the end is they’ve definitely gone through something that they have not gone through in previous seasons,” Beard said. “It’s a new layer to their relationship, which is always hard with a recurring series. How do you find new layers, new things to play, new depths? Because we got the time to really spread out this story over all these parts. We got to take it a bit further than before. So yeah, deeper levels, I would say.”

Beard said his character juggles his personal life alongside his professional life.

“We see Max at the beginning of this season. He’s come back from America where he’s been on a very successful press tour because they’ve all lapped up his psychoanalytic theories and he’s taken Freud over there and it’s gone down very well, which is as a lot of this series is quite loosely based on some truths about how well Freud did when he went over there,” Beard said.

“And he’s also been given a promotion at work. So he has a lot of new responsibilities, so he’s riding high when he comes back. But of course for him, the work and that side of it is not as thrilling as being with Oskar and working on cases. So he very quickly gets back into that. And in terms of his relationships, well, we leave the last season with him and Clara kind of shaking hands and deciding to have a professional relationship. She’s now an investigative journalist and to sort of have this kind of Lois Lane/Clark Kent thing going on where they kind of professionally solve crimes together.

“But of course it’s more complicated than that. And as these episodes develop, we go back over some old ground in terms of if there’s certain things there which have not been solved and not been talked about and unresolved feelings which come to the forefront.”

With the fourth season ready for its premiere, Beard and Maurer are excited for viewers to see the entire story.

Beard advises viewers to watch or rewatch the first three seasons because both characters have changed over the course of the journey.

“In the first season, we’re at very different ends of the spectrum of how we view crime solving. Then as the seasons have progressed since then, this relationship’s got deeper and deeper and we found out more about their personal lives,” Beard said. “My family and I have a sort of on-off relationship with a character who’s now, by this point in season four, become a kind of investigative journalist. And on Oskar’s side, we find out about his relationship and his home life and his past. So the characters get more and more fleshed out and developed as the seasons go on.

“In season four, I’ve been promoted to the top of the neurology department, the hospital. But that side of stuff is all quite boring to Max. He’s much more excited about working with Oskar on his thrilling adventures and his thrilling life. And that’s, I think, probably enough to get you going if you’ve just started it now.”

Maurer chimed in by saying, “I have nothing to add to this because it was perfectly introduced, but if you missed the first three seasons, you would happen to see a fully developed romance and trying to solve a major crime at the end of the Austrian Empire.”