Amelia Lydgate (Lucy Griffiths), Max Liebermann (Matthew Beard), Oskar Rheinhardt (Juergen Maurer) in ‘Vienna Blood’ season 2. (Image credit: BBC/Endor Productions/MR Film/Petro Domenigg)

Series 2 of the Austrian-set crime thriller, Vienna Blood, is headed to PBS beginning January 9. As with series 1, the new installments will, once again, pair a world-weary Austrian police detective and with a young doctor of psychology as they team up to solve crimes in 1900s Vienna.

Starring Matthew Beard (The Imitation Game), and Juergen Maurer (Tatort), Vienna Blood takes place in 1900s Vienna, which just so happens to be a breeding ground of philosophy, science and art. Max Liebermann (Beard) is a brilliant young English doctor, studying under psychoanalyst Sigmund Freud. He meets Oskar Rheinhardt (Maurer), an Austrian detective and the pair go on to tackle some of Vienna’s most mysterious and deadly cases.

The 6-part first series also starred Conleth Hill (Game of Thrones), Charlene McKenna (Ripper Street), Amelia Bullmore (Surbuban Shootout, Twenty Twelve, W1A, Scott & Bailey, Ashes to Ashes, Gentleman Jack), Jessica De Gouw (Dracula), and Luise Von Finckh (Gute Zeiten, Schlechte Zeiten).

As one would expect given his Freud connection, the young Dr. Liebermann (Beard) focuses his attention on wanting to understand the criminal mind. As he begins to observe Detective Inspector Oskar Rheinhardt (Maurer), he is able to bring his extraordinary skills of perception and forensics combined with a deep understanding of human behavior to help DI Rheinhardt begin to crack some of Vienna’s more elusive cases.

Photo: BBC / Red Arrow Productions

The 6-part second series will feature three mysteries — The Melancholy Countess, The Devil’s Kiss and Darkness Rising.

According to the BBC, the first episode, The Melancholy Countess, opens in the autumn of 1907 with a rather despondent Hungarian Countess being found drowned in a bath. Max had earlier asked the Countess to stop taking her prescribed medication and start taking a course of Freud’s talking cure with himself. With his reputation in tatters, Max and Oskar set about cracking the case which takes a new twist when they discover the Countess was poisoned…

From the talented pen of Steve Thompson, whose writing credits include episodes from the BBC’s Sherlock, the series is based on the best-selling novels of Frank Tallis.

When Steve Thompson talks about the author Frank Tallis and his novels, it’s easy to understand why the Sherlock writer immediately associated himself with the series. “They’re just dripping in detail,” Thompson said when talking about the books. “They’re so incredibly rich. It takes about two lines before you think, ‘This guy has actually been to Vienna.’ This is an incredibly vital time in the history of Vienna. So much was changing: this was the birth of modernism, and the clash between the modern and the old cultures was happening not only in medicine and psychology but also in music and art and architecture. That clash and richness of culture Frank sums up so beautiful in the incredible detail of what he writes.”

Vienna Blood S2 returns Sundays on PBS beginning January 9, 2022.