Ivan Radford | On 25, Sep 2024

“Try not to solve any murders today.” Those aren’t the words you typically expect to hear in a crime drama. Then again, BBC One’s Ludwig isn’t your typical crime drama. And Ludwig (David Mitchell), technically, isn’t even a detective.

John Ludwig Taylor, to use his full name, is a reclusive puzzle obsessive. He’s barely in touch with his own brother, DCI James Taylor. But when James goes missing, his sister-in-law, Lucy (Anna Maxwell Martin), ropes him into solving the mystery – by getting Ludwig to impersonate James and rifle through his office in Cambridge police station for clues. The bad news? Someone gets murdered. And when someone gets murdered, they expect the detectives to solve it. The even worse news? Ludwig turns out to be quite good at it.

That’s the basic premise for the six-part series, and it’s a good one – not because it’s particularly believable (any police officer worth their salt would spot the difference between Ludwig and James immediately), but because it plays into the unrealistic dream we all have that, because we can crack a sudoko once a fortnight, we could totally solve a crime. Ludwig’s reaction to discovering exactly that is wonderfully hilarious, as he doesn’t know whether to be delighted or frustrated, which is his usual reaction to everything.

David Mitchell is a treat to watch as he gets a meaty dramatic character that’s written to his strengths – he can lean into his propensity for a flabbergasted rant and bluntly delivered deadpan observations, but give it some subtler notes of melancholy and loneliness, as we learn more about his relationship – or lack thereof – with his brother. Anna Maxwell Martin, meanwhile, joins him on that precipice between comedy and tragedy, bossily fussing around her brother-in-law with a familiarity that’s almost too familiar – there’s a tension to their interactions that they’re aware of as much as we are, which means we never quite know how each conversation is going to end.

The show is created by Mark Brotherhood, who has TV priors with Father Brown, Cold Feet, Benidorm and Death in Paradise – in short, the kind of material that means he knows his way around both comedy and a crime conundrum. He paces each puzzle-box episode with just enough twists to make for a compelling case-of-the-week show, without getting too bogged down in the Cluedo mechanics. Each set-up is cosy with a touch of quirky, in a way that will delight fans of Jonathan Creek.

The scripts make Ludwig enjoyably perceptive, even as the supporting characters repeatedly highlight his incompetence and arrogance when it comes to, you know, people – Dipo Ola is moving as the initially suspicious DI Russell Carter, Izuka Hoyle is wonderfully intimidating as the ambitious DI Alice Finch, the always-brilliant Dorothy Atkinson is hilariously scathing as DCS Carol Shaw, Sophie Willan is quietly unsettling as Holly Pinder, while national treasure Ralph Ineson is gloriously growling as the sceptical and secretive Chief Constable Ziegler.

Will any of them turn out to be embroiled in a shady conspiracy involving his brother and a past case? Most likely, although it’s equally possible that the whole puzzle is a construct invented in Ludwig or Lucy’s head to cope with life. That overarching enigma – scratching the itch we all have to beat everyone else in solving a riddle – is what gives Ludwig its darkly comic heartbeat, and Mitchell and the cast drop each new clue with the playful precision of Beethoven himself, accompanied by a witty score from Nathan Klein and Finn Keane that cheekily riffs on the classics. Try as you might not to, expect yourself to be scribbling in the margins of your puzzle book within minutes.

Ludwig is available on BBC iPlayer.

Add to Watchlist