'Vienna Blood' Will Run On Masterpiece In January

PBS will bring a brand new mystery series to American shores this winter, as Masterpiece will run with Vienna Blood. The series, which recently finished airing on BBC Two, will arrive on this side of the pond in January.

The new series is a period piece set at the turn of the century in Vienna, Austria. (Meaning the turn of the last century, the end of the Victorian era, not the turn of our century, which is rapidly becoming a period piece era of its own.) Based on the Liebermann books by author Frank Tallis, it stars Matthew Beard (The Imitation Game, Dracula) as the story's hero, Max Liebermann, 20-something middle-class British-Jew who moved to Austria in his teens. A doctor and a student of the famous Sigmund Freud, Lieberman finds himself making friends with Detective Oskar Rheinhardt, played by Jürgen Maurer. The two of them team up in a Sherlockian style partnership, with Liebermann the Watson to Rheinhardt's bloodhound.

Unlike Watson, however, Liebermann has a family. His parents are Mendel and Rachel Liebermann, played by Colenth Hill (Game of Thrones) and Amelia Bullmore (Gentleman Jack). His widowed older sister, Leah (Charlene McKenna), has a son, Daniel, as well. These characters are significant, as the growing anti-Semitism of the era in this time and place (1906) will affect them, especially the deeper Max gets into the line of work.