German Series in India
To Hell with Dr. Freud...and back
![Netflix Original Series "Freud" Robert Finster as Sigmund Freud in the Netflix Original Series "Freud"](/resources/files/png80/freud_pr_still_robert-finster-2300x100011-formatkey-png-w320m.png)
Netflix teams and Austria’s ORF network have produced an eight-part series about Sigmund Freud. The diagnosis: Freud is no history lesson, more like a lurid graphic novel come to life.
By Mark Tompkins
Time was when a TV mini-series about Dr. Sigmund Freud (1856–1939) would most likely have been a BBC production, with tony production values and actors speaking crisply enunciated English with Viennese accents. That show would have been a talky, genteel affair, with perhaps a slight melodramatic gloss thrown on Freud’s life to help an edifying history lesson go down more smoothly. Nothing too taxing for the audience.
Ich bin ein Haus, es ist dunkel in mir. Mein Bewusstsein ist ein einsames Licht, eine Kerze. Alles andere ist im Schatten, im Unbewussten: Instinkte, verbotene Wünsche und Erinnerungen, die wir nicht im Licht sehen wollen. Sie tanzen in der Dunkelheit um uns herum. Sie quälen und stochern uns.
"Freud" Zitat aus der Serie
In the streaming battles of the 21st century, it’s a different story and a different life story for the good doctor. In the eight-part serial Freud, a co-production of Netflix and Austria’s ORF network, a strapping young Doktor Freud becomes enmeshed in an occult conspiracy that threatens the Austro-Hungarian empire. Freud skims a few biographical details from Freud’s life, but in the service of a period-piece crime thriller blended with supernatural fantasy and horror. The result is a full-blown Mitteleuropa phantasmagoria.
As Freud opens in 1886 Vienna, brooding 30-year-old Freud (Robert Finster) can’t get his fellow medical doctors to take his work-in-progress theories about hysteria and the unconscious seriously. His colleagues openly jeer at him and adding to the sting, Freud is bitterly aware that Vienna’s habitual anti-Semitism will keep him from rising too far. No wonder he dips into his stash of cocaine every chance he gets. (To judge by Finster’s shirtless physique, Freud’s coke habit does not keep him from working out for two hours a day.) By chance, Freud’s medical training draws him into a murder investigation led by the grizzled war veteran Inspector Kiss (Georg Friedrich). The prime suspect is a high-ranking military officer, but Kiss refuses to give up the case, at great risk to his own life.
![Freud PR Still: Inspector Kiss Inspector Kiss (Georg Friedrich) in voller Uniform patrolliert nachts die Strassen von Wien](/resources/files/png80/freud-kiss-120011-formatkey-png-w320m.png)
Viktor and Sophia seek nothing less than to overthrow the dual monarchy of Austria-Hungary, so that Hungary can claim independence. (Maybe someone in Budapest is re-editing Freud right this minute to make the Szápárys the heroic leads of the series.) Their secret weapon is the mysterious medium Fleur Salomé, and with a name like that, how could she not summon the dead? The séance proves to be far more than a parlor game when Fleur (Ella Rumpf) enters a trance and, trespassing boundaries of space and time has a sinister vision of an abduction. Freud recognizes in Fleur a fellow visionary, and a transgressive affair soon ignites between them.
![Freud PR Still: Die Szápárys halten eine Séance. Viktor und Sophia Szápáry halten eine Séance in einem verdunkelten Raum ab. Das Medium Fleur verfällt in eine Trance.](/resources/files/png80/freud-seance21-formatkey-png-w320m.png)
![Freud PR Still: Freud an seinem Schreibtisch Promo Still aus der Netflix Serie "Freud": Freud (Robert Finster) sitzt gedankenversunken am Schreibtisch seiner Praxis.](/resources/files/png80/freud-office11-formatkey-png-w320m.png)
As much as Freud though, it’s Fleur and the dogged Inspector Kiss who prove worth following. In the past, veteran Austrian character actor Georg Friedrich has stolen the show by playing seedy lowlifes and bohemians in films by the late Michael Glawogger, among others, so his turn as the grimly righteous police officer Kiss marks a fascinating reinvention. He’s well paired with Christoph Krutzler as Kiss’ Obelix–like deputy Poschacher, whose droopy mustache provides the show’s sole note of comic relief.
![FREUD PR Still: Ella Rumpf spielt das myteriöse Medium Fleur Salomé Freud und Polizei Inspektor Kiss treffen auf das mysteriöse Medium Fleur Salomé in einem Salon.](/resources/files/png80/freud_pr_still_ella-rumpf.-111-formatkey-png-w320m.png)
Austria/Germany, 2020, 8 episodes @ 55 min.
Directed by Marvin Kren, written by Stefan Brunner, Benjamin Hessler and Marvin Kren
Starring Robert Finster, Ella Rumpf, Georg Friedrich, Christoph Krutzler, Anja Kling, Philipp Hochmair
Watch "FREUD"
In India and Germany:
NETFLIX