User Reviews

There certainly is a dark Sherlock Holmes vibe to this story. Max Liebermann is called out to a veterans hospital see retired soldier, Captain Steiner. Max does not believe that the care he is receiving is up to standard.

Steiner appears to be paranoid, fearing he is cursed. Max wants to take over his treatment but the doctor refuses.

Later Steiner kills himself in a gruesome way. The doctor in the hospital blames Max and he has to explain himself to his new boss.

When both Max and Oskar view evidence of torture on Steiner's body. They realise that maybe someone wanted information from him and were deliberately scaring him.

It was all to do with events in once taken place in China where something of value was stolen.

It certainly is a kind of a grisly treasure hunt. The baddie gets his just desserts outside a Chinese opium den. It's poetic justice.

Max uses his skills in neuropsychology to assess a retired soldier, who believes he's haunted by night demons.

It's another complex outing for Max and Oskar, a slightly macabre case for the duo, once again mixed in with the usual glowing visuals, it's another highly entertaining, very enjoyable mystery.

Some pretty gruesome scenes in this one, it didn't hold back.

I was definitely reminded of Sherlock once again for many different reasons, firstly, the music, that shouted 221B Baker Street, but also the exciting plot, and zany conclusion, it's a format that once again worked very, very well. Most of all though, I thought there was a definite touch of The Six Napoleans about it, no bad thing.

It's hard not to adore this show, and this was another super enjoyable episode.

8/10.

Well produced and well acted. Interesting plot, though the number of bodies was implausible, and I have a feeling that similar multiple break-ins and opium dens are from another crime-writer's plot, Sherlock Holmes? However that was not the only reference to something else. It started with a scene in the narrow wet streets at night in Vienna, then there were large shadows on the wall of a running man, then a man selling balloons, and then a scene where the criminal disappears into one of the kiosk structures that lead to the sewers. Someone was having fun with scenes from The Third Man, one of the most highly rated films of all time. If you go to the Weiner Reisenrad, there is no mention of its appearance with Orson Welles in The Third Man. Like The Sound Of Music, The Third Man seems to be unknown in Austria. Perhaps one the co-producers was making a point.

Unless I missed it, there was absolutely no reference to 'The Cuckoo Clock'. That would be all that was needed to absolutely complete the homage to 'The Third Man' (1948). We had the Vienna setting, we had all manner of oblique camera angles, we had the shadows on the wall, including that of the old balloon seller, and of course we had a fugitive fleeing the police and disappearing into the sewers via one of the cylindrical billboards which surround the access ladders down.

But no Cuckoo Clock. That was part of a brief monologue by Harry Lime (Orson Welles) at the base of the Riesenrad (Giant Wheel), which incidentally is erroneously depicted in the titles in its post WW2 format. It originally had 30 cabins, but wartime damage meant that it could only carry half that number, with an empty space between each. You can see in the depiction in the titles the empty frames which once carried the missing cabins, and it is often called the "gap-toothed" giant wheel.

Harry Lime made that speech, saying that this was all that Switzerland had created in 500 years of peace, but he forgot to mention the Swiss cheese, absolutely full of holes. The plot of this one was unfortunately just like a Swiss cheese, the holes were so glaring. To avoid spoilers, I won't list them, but I pitied Matthew Beard and Juergen Maurer having to act out this rubbish.

I will give it 5/10 for all the homage to The Third Man, one of the finest movies ever made, but really, please do try a bit harder!