Miss Sophie – Same Procedure As Every Year

 

Tags: Amazon streaming, comedy, farce, German TV series, murder mystery

⭐⭐⭐⭐
 

Miss Sophie – Same Procedure as Every Year is a German television series. The crime comedy is a prequel to the sketch comedy show Dinner for One.

At the beginning of the 20th century, on a country estate near Eastbourne in England , the young, emancipated Miss Sophie is impoverished after the death of her parents, and the castle is threatened with foreclosure. To alleviate her financial distress, she decides to marry rich. To this end, she invites five wealthy bachelors to her castle. Her suitors are the French champagne heir Mr. Pomeroy, property magnate Mr. Winterbottom, the self-proclaimed American billionaire Sir Toby, the German Admiral von Schneider, and the Hungarian Count Szabos.

Amazon Studio produced a very funny TV series, a period romcom farce making fun of several genres - murder mystery, romance and dating, nobles and servants, starving nobility, rich foreigners as husband material, hippie commune... 

The setting is in England and some of the potential husbands are foreigners but they all speak German. Kinda reminds me of Japan's Thermæ Romæ. Even the songs are so funny. The third episode played the ROSÉ and Bruno Mars song APT.

My favorite character is German Admiral von Schneider and his scene with the pigs is hilarious. The French character M. Pomeroy is played by actor Moritz Bleibtreu from Run Lola Run.

Highly recommended. In German only with English subtitles

Undercover Miss Hong

 

Tags: romcom, Korean, Netflix, mystery-ish 

Every Saturday and Sunday 

Asianwiki

Set in the late 1990s, Hong Keum-Bo (Park Shin-Hye) is in her 30's and is an elite supervisor for the Financial Supervisory Service. She is a cool-headed, working woman who only thinks about her job. She goes undercover as a 20 year old high school graduate, Hong Jang-Mi, and begins to work for a securities company where suspicious flows of funds are detected. There, she meets Shin Jung-Woo (Ko Kyoung-Pyo). He is the new CEO of Hanmin Securities Company. Shin Jung-Woo is a natural-born management consultant and a corporate raider, who believes that only numbers are honest. He uses any means necessary to reach his goal. He meets Hong Jang-Mi, whose face is the same as Hong Keum-Bo, whom he once loved. They become complicatedly entangled.

Yay! Park Shin-hye is back and playing a 20 year old High School graduate who was accepted to work in a business establishment under a program for people who never went to college. Park Shin-hye is 35 years old both in real life and in the series. 

I watched episodes 1 and 2 and I like it so far. I hope there won't be a love triangle.

Agatha Christie's Seven Dials

Tags: Agatha Christie, murder mystery, Netflix 

Goose🥚

From Wiki

Agatha Christie's Seven Dials is a British miniseries based on the 1929 novel The Seven Dials Mystery by Agatha Christie. Created and written by Chris Chibnall, and directed by Chris Sweeney, the miniseries stars Mia McKenna-Bruce, Edward Bluemel, Iain Glen, Martin Freeman, and Helena Bonham Carter.

Oops, British TV did it again! Bastardizing a perfectly good mystery novel by Agatha Christie is their modus operandi. It's getting tiresome. It is an adaptation but must they butcher the characters beyond recognition? I could tolerate just one episode out of 3. I don't know how the series ended.

• First, there is NO Lady Caterham, the mother of Bundle. She was already deceased in the first book with the same characters, The Secret of Chimneys. In the Netflix 3 part mini series, she is alive and well and it was Lord Caterham who died. Helena Bonham Carter playing the mother of Bundle looks like a grocery cart pushing bag lady. I am not kidding. 
• Netflix's Bundle is an emotional train wreck, the complete opposite of the novel's. Bundle is a lively character full of enthusiasm and ideas in solving the murders and just like her friends is not sulking and crying over their dead friends because there are murderers to apprehend and no time to spare. 
• In the book, Scotland Yard Superintendent Battle is a no nonsense law officer who is big framed and tall, built like an armoire. Here he is a short puny playful character, almost like a clown. 

Avoid if you have read the book. I recommend watching instead the 1981 TV series although old is better IMO, has all the humor, and follows the book closely. It's streaming on Amazon Prime.

The Impossible Fortune

Tags: murder mystery, The Impossible Fortune, Thursday Murder Club series

⭐

From Goodreads

Who's got time to think about murder when there's a wedding to plan?

It’s been a quiet year for the Thursday Murder Club. Joyce is busy with table plans and first dances. Elizabeth is grieving. Ron is dealing with family troubles, and Ibrahim is still providing therapy to his favourite criminal. But when Elizabeth meets a wedding guest who’s in trouble, kidnap and death are hot on their heels once more. A villain wants access to an uncrackable code, and will stop at nothing to get it.

Plunged back into action once more, can the gang solve the puzzle and a murder in time?

I think it's time to put the four octogenarians out to pasture. This fifth installment is lacking in humor and the usual solving of a murder. All four except Ron are hardly in it. My first beef is with the side character I don't care for the most, Joyce's daughter Joanna. She, her wedding, and her husband's 2 friends are at the center of the story. Ron and his family problems are also front and center. Joyce, Ibrahim, and even Elizabeth are like the side characters. Sheesh, Mr. Osman, what happened? Why a gazillion characters and red herrings that fell flat at the end?

I have a suspicious feeling that the author is hoping for another Netflix movie featuring Ron played by Pierce Brosnan because all members of his family are featured prominently in this book. The grandson, who talks like an adult, solves the second code together with an ex con teenager. 🙄 The first code is solved by Elizabeth but the second baffled her, an ex MI6 agent. Huh??!! IMHO, the book reads like an AI generated garbage.

Not recommended.

The Courtship

tags: Amazon video, drama, period movie, Hungarian, romance

⭐⭐⭐⭐

From Amazon Prime Video

1920's. Promising a generous dowry, a father finds a husband for his daughter through a want ad. Can the arranged marriage turn into true love?

Predictable funny sweet movie. All the possible clichés checked out but I enjoyed it very much, regardless. Watch it in its original Magyar language with English subtitles.

Highly recommended.

Believe Your Eyes

BREAKING: Alpha News has obtained cellphone footage showing perspective of federal agent at center of ICE-involved shooting in Minneapolis pic.twitter.com/p2wks0zew0

— Alpha News (@AlphaNews) January 9, 2026

Believe your eyes, not the main stream media and morons AKA Democrats who fight for illegal criminals and fraudsters draining your hard earned money for them to buy luxury cars and houses. Democrats NEVER fight for American citizens. EVER!

The woman who was killed was an anti-ICE professional paid to block streets to prevent ICE agents to do their job which is to arrest illegal aliens who have records of rapes of minors, murders, and fraud. 

FAFO

The same agent this year was already dragged by a car driven by a Hispanic illegal criminal who was found guilty and now in jail. The agent was hospitalized for his injuries. Cars are being used as a weapon by criminals and demented democrats. 

Update 

Here are numerous illegal alien criminals in Minnesota the dead idiot democrat voting woman, her partner, and democrat politicians are protecting from ICE agents. 

BREAKING: ICE has provided @FoxNews a list of the most egregious criminal aliens they've arrested during their surge in the sanctuary state of Minnesota, & it's the most disturbing list I've ever seen, including numerous convicted child rapists/sodomizers & ten convicted killers,… pic.twitter.com/xukxfLd4gZ

— Bill Melugin (@BillMelugin_) January 10, 2026

A Gun For Sale

tags: classics, crime, mystery, noir, thriller

⭐⭐⭐⭐

From Goodreads

Born out of a brutal childhood, Raven is an assassin for hire whose latest hit—a government minister—is one calculated to ignite a war. When the most wanted man in England is paid off in marked bills, he also becomes the easiest to track—and police detective Jimmy Mather has the lead. But Raven’s got an advantage. Crossing paths with a sympathetic dancer named Anne Crowder, the emotionally scarred Raven has found someone in the wreckage of his life he can trust, maybe his only hope for salvation. Or at least, escape—because Anne is also Mather’s fiancée. Now the fate of two men will depend on her. And either way, it’s betrayal.

This is the first time I read A Gun For Sale. It is a very good story told seamlessly. The author was obviously sympathetic to the assassin. Raven, the assassin, was an ugly looking guy - small bodied and with a harelip which made it hard for him to elude the police. The assassination was not the reason he was being sought by the police. It was the stolen bills that he was paid for the job of killing a Czech government minister in order to start a war. Raven wanted revenge for the duplicity of the man who hired him. 

He encountered Anne on a train and tried to steal her ticket because he cannot use the marked money for anything, not even for food. He was able to keep Anne as his hostage of sorts, intending to kill her but Anne was smart. The way she got away from him was pure genius. They met for the second time when he found her in an apartment bound and gagged by the man Raven was trying to find. Small world but this happened in the same town of Nottwich where the assassin, the man who hired him, and the police are all in. The short story has a happy ending for Anne and her police detective fiance. Not so for the 2 bad men. 

Recommended for readers who don't mind reading books written in the 1930s.

I read Graham Green's Brighton Rock many many years ago and also a few short stories, some made into movies. The Third Man and The Fallen Idol are terrific. I  have yet to see Brighton Rock movie adaptation which is already on my Kanopy watch list. Or maybe I have seen it already. 

Run Away

 

tags: cults, drama, Netflix, thriller 

⭐⭐

From Netflix 

Simon's perfect life is shattered when daughter Paige runs away, later found strung out in a park. Simon's search leads into a dangerous underworld where an act of violence rocks his life. 

The Netflix series is an adaptation of Harlan Coben's book Run Away. The synopsis sounded familiar and I checked on Goodreads if I had read the book. I had, in 2019. I vaguely remember except for the cult and the PI Elena. In the book she is an Hispanic lady but since the series is a British production, the character was changed. I don't recall some of the additional characters and I may have to read it again. 

I am not too happy with the casting, as usual. How in the world does a shortish overweight woman work as a SWAT team leader(?) and sort of able to "rescue" a fit tall guy, who later became her husband. I was laughing hard at the giant beach ball running while carrying a heavy weapon trying to kill the bad guys in a warehouse. The warehouse scene explaining how she met her husband is totally unnecessary. The other fat girl is a police detective/investigator acting like a teenager in love and sleeping with her partner. Speaking of the partner, the young Black actor is surely an eye candy but sheesh, he simply cannot act. His idea of acting is knitting his eyebrows. All. The. Time. 

Not recommended.

Ang Mutya Ng Section E

 

tags: action, comedy, drama, Filipino series, High School kids, romance, violence

⭐⭐⭐⭐

from IMDB

A notorious all-male section is shaken up by the arrival of a female transfer student, causing chaos as the grumpy class section president tries to drive her away.

I noticed the second season of this Filipino series in one of Kdrama websites but the first season is missing. I looked for and found the complete first season 16 episodes in another website and finished watching. I'll start the new season when it is complete. 

The Jewel Of Section E is the literal English translation of Ang Mutya Ng Section E. Mutya, pronounced moot-ya or moo-tcha, means pearl, gem, jewel, or muse. The series obviously got the idea from Japan's Hana Yori Dango but I can't accuse the writers of ripping off HYD because HYD is a Japanese anime version of Pride and Prejudice's Mr. Darcy and Lizzie Bennet. Yes, it is.* The lead male is always wealthy, arrogant, and a snob and the lead female is feisty and not afraid to speak her mind. Pride and Prejudice probably created the original love triangle with Darcy, Elizabeth and Wickam. But the similarity ends there because Wickam is a cad and HYD and AMNSE made the second lead a kind lovable boy. In HYD, he has blonde hair and in Mutya, he is Japanese with rooster red hair.   

The girl JayJay, was expelled from her school because of violence and she was taken in by the International School with the help of her wealthy cousin. JayJay is not just feisty, she is downright gangster. LOL. In no time did she become friends with the boys in Section E and also a few of the girls in the higher Sections. 

Recommended for Hana Yori Dango fans.

* Mr. Darcy and Elizabeth Bennet pairing is the staple of Mills & Boon romance novels - wealthy, stiff, arrogant mid 30s male and very very young spirited female. I read enough of them to say it is true at the time. I can't say for sure if it is the same today, though. 

Guns & Moses

 

tags: Amazon Prime movie, gun toting Rabbi, thriller 

⭐⭐⭐⭐out of 5

from Amazon Prime Video 

A small-town rabbi becomes an unlikely detective and gunfighter after his community is violently attacked in this sharp, high-stakes thriller packed with action, wit, and heart 

The title got me to check it out on Amazon Prime Video. I thought it will be a comedy but it is not and I loved it. A murder mystery with cliched usual suspects but I enjoyed it very much. Rabbi Moyshe is an unlikely gunslinging detective wannabe but he had no choice in order to protect not just his family but also the innocent patsy. 

I like the part where rabbi Mo, a few days before the murder, approached the young man falsely accused by police. The boy was taunting the group of Jewish people outside the strip mall. Rabbi Mo offered some brownies and asked him to talk to the group. The boy listened to the old man about being a holocaust survivor and he eventually got a brownie and ate it, didn't argue with them at all. Rabbi Mo believed his innocence because he "ate the brownie". It's very meaningful, IMHO. The movie is not about anti Jews but about money and corruption. Cliche, I know.

Having gun protection during congregations not just for Jewish people but all religions specially Christian gatherings, is absolutely necessary. Hanukkah and Christmas are specially targeted by satanic moslems wherever in the world they are. So, this line is important not just in a movie but also in real life: "May God and your Glock protect you."

Highly recommended.

The Great Flood

tags: AI, disaster, Korean, mystery, Netflix movie, sci-fi 

⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐out of 5

from Netflix

When a raging flood traps a researcher and her young son, a call to a crucial mission puts their escape — and the future of humanity — on the line. 

I loved the movie. Visuals, acting, dialog, and CGI are very good. One of my favorite Korean actresses, Kim Da-mi stars as the "mother". 

It is part disaster, sci fi and mystery, I was confused at first but I stayed on watching the seemingly endless time loop similar to Tom Cruise's Edge of Tomorrow. 

When researcher An-na died, her memories and emotions were used to create an AI version of a mother who genuinely cares for her child, recreating it over and over again until they are ready to be sent to Earth and repopulate it after devastation from the flood disaster. 

Viewers who love a disaster movie will be disappointed because the story is about AI and how it might become useful in the future. The movie is not for everybody but will be appreciated more by true science fiction fans.

Spoilers

Brat Farrar

tags: mystery, ugly

goose🥚

From Goodreads 

What begins as a ploy to claim an inheritance ends with the impostor's life hanging in the balance. In this tale of mystery and suspense, a stranger enters the inner sanctum of the Ashby family posing as Patrick Ashby, the heir to the family's sizable fortune. The stranger, Brat Farrar, has been carefully coached on Patrick's mannerisms, appearance, and every significant detail of Patrick's early life, up to his thirteenth year when he disappeared and was thought to have drowned himself. It seems as if Brat is going to pull off this most incredible deception until old secrets emerge that jeopardize the impostor's plan and his life. Culminating in a final terrible moment when all is revealed, Brat Farrar is a precarious adventure that grips the reader early and firmly and then holds on until the explosive conclusion.

This is the worst mystery novel written by Josephine Tey and the worst I have read this year. She made an impostor, criminal, and thief an honorable character and made a 13 year boy murder his twin brother right after their parents were killed. Just because he didn't like his brother. No other explanation and not believable at all. This was an awful read.  

Tey had a habit of telling instead of showing. Throughout the short novel, now 21 year old adult Simon, never showed that he is an evil Cain. It was all in the mind of the impostor who was always sure it was Simon, at age 13 who killed his brother, without explaining why he thought so. Just a hunch. What?? Simon confessed to him when got drunk and justified the impostor's suspicion. 

The author never showed any sympathy for the fictional family who lost the parents at the same time, just told what happened., as though in real life she abhored the landed gentry. Anyway, the parents left 13 year old twin brothers Patrick and Simon, 11 year old Eleanor, and 1 year old twin babies, Ruth and Jane. I was so annoyed when out of the blue, the impostor Patrick thought that 9 year old Ruth probably has never been spanked. She hadn't done nor showed anything to make an adult spank her. She was a well behaved and spoken young girl. That's lazy crazy writing. Tey was not a talented writer or she was absolutely bonkers when she wrote this book. 

Not recommended.

The Jealousy Man and Other Stories

tags: Jo Nesbø, short stories, mystery, The Jealousy Man

⭐⭐⭐ 

From Amazon  

A detective with a nose for jealousy is on the trail of a man suspected of murdering his twin. [adapted into a movie, Killer Heat.]

A bereaved father must decide whether vengeance has a place in the new world order after a pandemic brings about the collapse of society.

A garbage man fresh off a bender tries to piece together what happened the night before.

A hired assassin matches wits against his greatest adversary in a dangerous game for survival.

An instantly electric connection between passengers on a flight to London may spell romance, or something more sinister. 

From Goodreads

Five stories set in the near future.

 

Welcome to Rat Island and a post-pandemic America, where the upper-class elite is waiting atop a skyscraper to be evacuated while the masses fight for survival down in the streets. 

In Shredder, a scientist researching eternal life has finally found a memory shredder that will help him forget everything, before it’s too late. 

Cicadas tells the story of two best friends on their way to the bull races in Pamplona when they fall in love with the same girl. 

The Antidote follows an estranged son with an agenda as he goes to visit his father at a snake farm in Africa. 

Lastly, in the epic and vicious Black Knight, we meet a psychologist who also happens to be an assassin contracted by big business.

All the stories have a common theme: jealousy. Some are very good but some are mediocre at best. The movie adaptation of The Jealousy Man has just 2 similarities to the story - the murder and the location. Everything else is skewed. The role played by Joseph Gordon-Levitt is a 60 years old Greek, still active police detective. He is not a lousy poser that the producer made him in the movie. Movie adaptations from books are always annoying. 

J and K Drama OST

Collecting original music from Japanese and Korean dramas started with Japanese Hana Yori Dango and Korea's version, Boys Over Flowers. I downloaded songs from several dramas until I got tired of it. Most are from 2012 series. I recently downloaded a couple from 2 newer Korean dramas. Netflix also added several of my favorite romance dramedy series, some from 2009, and I rewatched You're Beautiful. Park Shin Hye was just 19 years old and not very good but I still love her and the series, and the songs. This is another gender bending theme, with Shin Hye's character playing her twin brother invading the boys' house. So much fun and crying in this drama. LOL

The latest from Korea, Dynamite Kiss, is currently airing on Netflix, Wednesday and Thursday, on the  US Top Ten every Thursday. 

   

Korea, 2009, You're Beautiful with Jang Keun Suk and Park Shin Hye, newly added on Netflix. The song is performed by the blonde one, Lee Hong-Ki with his band F.T. Island. All 3 boys are musicians. 

Japan, 2005, Hana Yori Dango, 2 seasons, theme song by Arashi, member Jun Matsumoto plays the male lead,Tsukasa Domyoji. This is way better than Korea's Boys Over Flowers. The video was made in 2007 and has nothing to do with the drama.

Korea, 2024 - 2025, Iron Family, 50 episodes

Japan, 2012, Rich Man, Poor Woman with Oguri Shun 

 

Korea, 2012, To The Beautiful You, Korean version of Hana Kimi. It has more drama and romance and cuter leads, Minho and Kang Haneul. Sulli, the actress who pretended to be a boy sadly passed away in 2019.

 

Korea, 2009, Boys Over Flowers, Korean version of Hana Yori Dango. It made Lee Min-ho an international star. Still on Netflix.   

Japan, 2012, Sprout, with really young actors ;

Korea, 2012, Love Rain, with Jang Keun Suk and Im Yoona, coming to Netflix soon.

Nouvelle Vague

 

tags: Jean-Luc Godard, movie about a movie (breathless), Netflix, Nouvelle Vague

⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐out of five

A playful, poignant love letter to cinema, Nouvelle Vague reimagines the making of Jean-Luc Godard’s Breathless in an exuberant exploration of the youthful rebellion and creative chaos that shaped the French New Wave. Directed by Richard Linklater, starring Zoey Deutch, Guillaume Marbeck, and Aubry Dullin.

Zoey Deutch who played Jean Seberg's role as Patricia is the daughter of Lea Thompson.  

Last Samurai Standing

tags: Japanese dorama, Netflix

⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐

From Wikipedia

Last Samurai Standing is a 2025 Japanese Netflix original live-action television series adapted from a Japanese manga series of the same name, which is also based on the novel of the same name written by Shogo Imamura and illustrated by Katsumi Tatsuzawa. Starring Junichi Okada, Yumia Fujisaki and Kaya Kiyohara, and set in the late 19th century during the Meiji period, the series takes place at the Tenryūji monastery in Kyoto. 

292 fighters came together at Tenryū-ji Temple in Kyoto after sunset, drawn by the chance to win a grand prize of ¥100,000. The challenge was clear: take each other's wooden tags and make it all the way to Tokyo. The winner would get the prize. One of the warriors, Shujiro Saga, joined the dangerous contest with a personal mission: to help his sick wife and child.

All 6 episodes are streaming on Netflix. It's action packed period series - a mash up of Battle Royale,  Alice In Borderland, and of course Squid Game. 

Game host/master Enju is played by Ninomiya Kazunari whom I recently watched in Ties Of Shooting Stars. He was also the voice of the animated Kurosensei.

Hana Kimi

 

Ore Wa Homo Janai~!!

Hana Kimi is my favorite Japanese dorama, a live version of the anime. This was filmed in 2007 and has never been equaled. I think it is funnier and better than Hana Yori Dango. There are Korean (To The Beautiful You, which I also like and still have the OST in my iPod) and Taiwanese (never saw and liked Chinese language dramedies) versions. It has a gender bending theme a la Shakespeare's Twelfth Night and As You Like it but with the Japanese style silliness. I watched this series in 2010 and watching it again on Netflix. I still love it specially Nakatsu. 

Nakatsu thought he was gay because he felt a spark and is attracted to the girl pretending to be a boy. I believe he set the trend in second lead syndrome in dramaland. I love the first couple, though, and the first series I've seen with Oguri Shun. He is also in Hana Yori Dango and numerous movies. He has a new dorama currently streaming on Netflix, Romantics Anonymous. I have seen probably half of all his TV series and movies. One of my favorites is live action movie, Lupin the Third. 

The lead female enrolled in an all boys high school where intelligence and wealth are not necessary. The boys just have to be ikemen and apparently weird. Word got out that there is a girl in the school and the boys set up tests to determine who is female among the students. The tests were weird but hilarious.

Highly recommended for Japanese dorama fans.

Escape From New York

Streaming on Amazon 

The film, set in a then-near-future world of 1997, concerns a crime-ridden United States, which has converted Manhattan Island in New York City into the country's sole maximum security prison. Air Force One is hijacked by anti-government insurgents who deliberately crash it into the walled-off borough. Former Special Forces and current federal prisoner Snake Plissken (Russell) is given just 24 hours to go in and rescue the President of the United States, after which, if successful, he will be pardoned.

Wealthy and average New Yorkers are now trying to flee the city. Just like in this movie. Well, you voted for the communist, so don't try to escape to RED states, you morons! 

Nobody Wants This

tags: Netflix, romance, sitcom

goose🥚

Sparks fly when an agnostic podcast host and a rabbi connect at a party, navigating the complexities of modern love. Their families, however, may prove to be the biggest obstacle. Will their differing worldviews and meddling relatives derail their budding romance?

I tried watching this series on Netflix. I really did try but I just can't continue watching after the first episode which was already a torture. Dialog, acting, situations are too forced and cliched. Contrived. Contrived Contrived. The last time I watched a Hollywood produced sitcom and drama was probably 15 years ago and this series reminds me why I stopped. 

Nobody Wants This most especially me.

The Lifted Veil

tags: clairvoyance, gothic, horror, mystery, sci-fi

⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐

From Goodreads

The tale of a man who is incapacitated by visions of the future and the cacophony of overheard thoughts, and yet who can’t help trying to subvert his vividly glimpsed destiny, it is easy to read The Lifted Veil as being autobiographically revealing—of Eliot’s sensitivity to public opinion and her awareness that her days concealed behind a pseudonym were doomed to a tragic unveiling (as indeed came to pass soon after this novella’s publication). But it is easier still to read the story as the exciting and genuine precursor of a moody new form, as well as an absorbing early masterpiece of suspense.

George Eliot managed to insert several genres in this 100 page novella: gothic, horror, attempted murder, mystery, science fiction. Utterly brilliant. The novella reminds me of Edgar Allan Poe's bizarre stories.

The novelette opens with a dying man, the first person narrator Latimer, on his death bed predicting his household servants will not come to him as he died, explaining where they will be instead.. I thought he was having a pity party, He then proceeded to tell his story as the son from his father's second marriage. He has an older brother from the first wife. Latimer felt his father neglected and compared him with the brother who was 8 years older, wiser, and more manly than his androgynous and weak looks. He was only 16 after all. 

He was sent to Vienna to study and became friends with a nerdy type (who later became a famous doctor). His happiness was cut short due to an illness and he was bedridden. He then developed a precognitive ability, he became a clairvoyant, seeing things, people, and places that are about to materialize. That's when he became fascinated with his brother's fiancee whom he thought was manipulative and cunning beneath her blonde beauty.

Highly recommended.