Posted in: BBC, TV | Tagged: bbc iplayer, Ludwig

Ludwig: The Best New Quirky Detective Show You Should Be Watching

Here's why David Mitchell and Anna Maxwell Martin-starring Ludwig might just be the funniest new oddball detective mystery comedy going.

You might think Quirk Detective Shows are a dime a dozen now, but here's one of the best new ones you haven't heard of if you're not in the UK: Ludwig. The high concept has a reclusive puzzle designer who poses as his missing twin cop brother to find out what happened to his brother and ends up solving murders as a fake cop. It's the outright comedy that's different from every other mystery procedural series out there right now. Of course, it's on the BBC, but possibly not for long.

Ludwig: The Extremely Reluctant Detective and Fake Cop

David Mitchell, a household name in the UK from Peep Show (the comedy series that put Succession creator Jess Armstrong on the map) and one of the funniest actors in Britain, plays John Taylor, who makes a good living designing puzzles for magazines and newspapers under the nickname "Ludwig" after his favourite composer Beethoven. One day, his sister-in-law Lucy (Anna Maxwell Martin) tells him his cop twin brother James has gone into hiding and left her a cryptic note and presses him to pose as James to go into the police station to find information about his disappearance. John is not the confident, hypercompetent hero of American crime shows but a socially awkward, introverted recluse with anxiety who hates to leave his house. He knows that impersonating a police officer is against the law, even if said police officer looks like him. But Lucy is determined to find out what happened to her husband and sends John to the station to get information from James' office. Then John accidentally solves a murder, and things get complicated. Murders are puzzles, and puzzles are meant to be solved. John's empathy and decency toward the victims' families make him want to solve more murders as he goes along.

"This is A Bit Awkward – I Think I Might Have Just Solved a Murder"

The main draw of Ludwig is the comedy of watching Mitchell as a fake cop constantly in a panic since stepping out of his house is already a panic-inducing prospect. Anna Maxwell Martin injects a subtly wacky screwball energy into her performance as the laser-focused Lucy, who's so obsessed with solving her husband's disappearance that she gets annoyed that John keeps going off course to solve murders. Both Mitchell and Martin can make the most ordinary lines funny, and when they're in a scene together, the comic contrast between his constant near-panic and her unwavering eagerness makes the show sing. John loses his anxiety when he gets in the groove of solving a murder entirely through logic, amazing his police colleagues, and becoming so matter-of-fact that his off-hand remarks also become hilarious.

How Soon Before a US Network Remakes This?

Eccentric detective series are a staple in both British and US television, and their comfort food procedural formats tend to make them hits. We've had Monk (the closest US parallel to this show), Elementary, and most recently, Elsbeth and High Potential, where the odder the detective character, the better. Ludwig is the kind of series that would sit comfortably on PBS or Brtibox in the US, but how much would you care to bet that one of the US networks will remake it into a glossier and more glamourous US remake?

Ludwig is currently only streaming on the BBC iPlayer in the UK.

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