Created and written by Mark Brotherhood, Ludwig takes the age-old mystery dramedy format and brings in a detective that certainly isn’t one we’ve seen before. Sure, we’ve seen quirky detectives who are a bit obsessive and meticulous, almost in a debilitating fashion. We’ve also seen detectives who are thrust into a situation and they somehow make their way through and solve murders. But what we haven’t seen is someone who not only is in the first two situations, but also is a puzzle genius.
Opening Shot: The camera pans around the windows of an office building, showing the goings-on as the business day winds down. It finally lands on the office of a solicitor, lying dead next to his desk, with a knife in his chest.
The Gist: John Taylor (David Mitchell, Peep Show) loves puzzles; he’s the kind of guy who uses a pen to fill out the daily crossword and sudoku puzzles in the newspaper. He loves puzzles so much that it’s his job: He writes puzzle books under the pen name “Ludwig,” a tribute to one of his favorite composers, Ludwig van Beethoven.
As he’s creating a puzzle and about to make his Sunday pasta dinner when he gets a call from his sister-in-law, Lucy Betts-Taylor (Anna Maxwell Martin). Lucy grew up with both John and his twin brother James (Mitchell), and ended up marrying James, who is a detective chief inspector with the Cambridge Police. She wants her reclusive brother-in-law to drop what he’s doing and take the taxi she sent to take him the 140 miles to see her.
When he arrives, Lucy tells John that James is on a case that has made him withdrawn lately, and now it’s to the point where he hasn’t been home in a few days. He also left her a cold-sounding note that says she and their son Henry (Dylan Hughes) should leave town. She wants John to go into the police station and find an orange-covered notebook in James’ office. It should be easy; after all, John and James are identical twins.
John wants no part of it, as he hates small talk and thinks his social anxiety will show if he encounters someone. Lucy briefs him on who he might run into: John’s boss, DCI Carol Shaw (Dorothy Atkinson), John’s partner, DI Matt Neville (Karl Pilkington), young and eager DC Simon Evans (Gerran Howell) and ambitious DS Alice Finch (Izuka Hoyle). Right as he’s about to enter his brother’s office, though, John is intercepted by DI Russell Carter (Dipo Ola), who is apparently James’ new partner. He takes John to the murder scene of the dead solicitor.
Of course, John is in a sweaty panic, and he calls Lucy, who tells him to keep up the charade. He tries to fake it until he makes it, but then, while looking at the printed card-swipe logs and other evidence, he manages to figure out who killed the victim. He presents his reasoning to the prospective suspects as a complicated game grid, but somehow manages to get the killer to break down and confess.
This still hasn’t gotten him any closer to finding out where his brother is, but when he finds the notebook, he sees lots of codes that he thinks he can crack.
What Shows Will It Remind You Of? Ludwig is a pretty classic mystery series along the lines of Columbo, Monk and the recently-released The Residence.
Our Take: Mitchell is fun to watch as John Taylor, whose discomfort with, well, people is evident on his face whenever he has to talk to someone. He may know puzzles but he has no idea how to properly investigate murders, which is something that he’s now going to have to do as he tries to figure out what happened to his brother. Anna Maxwell Martin is also fun to watch as Lucy, who keeps prodding her childhood friend and brother-in-law along as he leans on her about info involving his brother’s life and career.
The first murder got a bit of short shrift in the debut episode, but that’s forgivable given how much setup we need to get to know John, have Lucy rope him into finding out what happened to James, and then show John surprising himself at how he’s able to apply his knowledge of puzzles to solving that first murder.
Will the rest of them be more in-depth? We don’t know; we might just enjoy watching John slam-dunk one case after another using his unique gifts. It really depends on how much of each episode is going to consist of the individual mysteries, the overall story of James’ disappearance, and John’s efforts not to be found out. That’s a lot to cover in each one-hour episode, so we may see a different balance in each of them, which is fine with us as long as we get to keep seeing John solve murders like he solves the daily crossword.
Sex and Skin: None.
Parting Shot: Just as he did when he was a kid after his and James’ father left them, John creates a puzzle; he writes out the info from his brother’s notebook on a sheet of wrapping paper, which is pinned under pictures of his co-workers. We see both middle-aged John and young John (Jakub Bednarczyk) sign the puzzles “Ludwig.”
Sleeper Star: We’ll pick Gerran Howell as DC Simon Evans, mainly because he’s so good on The Pitt playing an all-American farm boy med student Dennis Whitaker that we had no idea he’s from the UK in real life (he’s Welsh).
Most Pilot-y Line: The modern, open office design of where James works at the Cambridge Police headquarters is strange, especially when his “office” is just a big cubicle. You’d think he’d require a little more privacy than that.
Our Call: STREAM IT. Ludwig is a fun mystery series to follow, mainly because of David Mitchell’s performance as a reluctant detective who’d rather just create puzzles alone in his flat than solve murders.
Joel Keller (@joelkeller) writes about food, entertainment, parenting and tech, but he doesn’t kid himself: he’s a TV junkie. His writing has appeared in the New York Times, Slate, Salon, RollingStone.com, VanityFair.com, Fast Company and elsewhere.