Ludwig, BBC One review - entertaining spin on the brainy detective formula

The latest incarnation of David Mitchell, TV actor, looks at first sight much like the familar one from Peep Show and Back. Not a pufflepant in sight. His only costume change for Ludwig is a pair of wire-frame spectacles. 

HIs role is pretty familiar too: a buttoned-down individual who culturally favours the classics over the popular, the corduroy sports coat over the tracksuit. Presumably a fan of Beethoven, he has adopted the pen-name Ludwig for his line of work; behind the name he is John Taylor, bachelor. But fate calls him to apply his skills forensically, and he joins the line of eccentric puzzle-solving sleuths who have entertained us over the years. 

The skill of the BBC series launching this character is that it makes a virtue of sticking to the formula, with the small spin that unlike his vaunted predecessors – Sherlock Holmes, Monk, Patrick Jane in The Mentalist, Professor T – “Ludwig” really is a puzzle expert: he makes a living creating bestselling books of puzzles and, like all such clever sadists, hides behind a pen-name. This makes him a handy addition to the local police force in Cambridge, where murders occur as frequently as they did in rival uni-town Oxford in the days of Inspector Morse. But Mark Brotherhood’s script doubles down on this talent, as the overarching puzzle that Ludwig is trying to solve is what on earth has happened to his equally brainy twin James, a detective who, according to John, is a much more gifted puzzle-setter and solver than he is. And lo, it seems James has indeed left “breadcrumbs” as to his whereabouts in the form of a notebook full of code. John’s challenge is to find the source code that will unlock its secrets. 

For this he assumes he needs access to James’s desk, and to his work computer in particular. So his only recourse is to pose as James, report for duty and pray nobody will notice the switch. In between musings and jottings, he of course manages to solve a murder a week, using the logical models that are the tools of his trade. First up is the murder in a locked room beloved of crime writers. In a nod to Poirot’s MO, each of his solutions is presented to the group of suspects wherever they happen to be – a building site in one case – with a bravura display missing in most of John’s dealings with the world.

Mitchell’s Would I Lie to You? persona – resident posho and clever-clever boy – is a good fit for John the puzzler, a man who likes to live the life of the mind alone, keeping the everyday world at a distance. The everyday world here includes being able to use a smartphone and park a car successfully. It also means having to work at police HQ and being sociable with a large group of strangers. 

John is up against a formidable cast of character actors there. HIs immediate superior is the wonderfully glacial Dorothy Atkinson (pictured above, with Ineson), for once more than an ice queen. Above her is Ralph Ineson as her ramrod-straight (though criminally bent?) chief constable boss; below them all is excellent Sophie Willan as the acerbic police IT expert. Not quite enough mileage is made of John’s potential gaffes in impersonating his brother (if you have seen the trailer, you’ve seen most of them), but presumably the script had to steer clear of loading the plot with too many implausible howlers so that John’s cover can be blown slowly over six hour-long episodes.

Back at James’s neat but dull 1960s house lurk even more dangers for John. As in the excellent Nordic drama Twin, there’s a question mark hanging over the two brothers’ relationship with James’s photographer wife Lucy (Anna Maxwell Martin, pictured left). An extra layer of puzzle is set for the viewer: has John developed more than fraternal feelings for Lucy, his friend since childhood, probably without realising it, given that he has the emotional intelligence of a Kinder egg? We might suspect Lucy married the wrong brother, except that we don’t have a living, breathing James to measure John against, but it gives their house-share a bit more of a frisson.

Maxwell Martin is up to her usual tricks here, flashing toothy grins and widening her big round eyes in her quest to manipulate John into finding James. At times she’s like a hyperactive little pixie, her hairdo about as modish as a Start-Rite kid’s; she’s barely credible as a woman with a 15-year-old son. But when needed she can flick a switch to become a concerned mother and distraught wife. Her mercurial presence is a welcome counterweight to John’s slow-moving boffin, but she also throws a sympathetic light on him, making him more dependable rock than deadweight.

 Less interestingly written are the police-station regulars who tend to fall into stereotypes – the ambitious young woman trying to outpace an eager-beaver male colleague, the patient good-guy detective (Dipo Ola) who’s partnered up with John. The police pathologist, though, as per all tec-shows, has an unusual distinguishing characteristic: this one is a woman with hearing loss and a wonderful razor-sharp manner towards people dissing her abilities. 

Familiar faces turn up to join in the fun – Derek Jacobi, Felicity Kendal, Rose Ayling-Ellis, Karl Pilkington. And fun it is intended to be, underpinned by the jaunty theme tune and incidental music, which wittily cannibalise well known Beethoven melodies. The finale leaves another question: it shows all the signs of being a slip road to a second series... will there be one? As long as Brotherhood has a good stock of clever solutions to apparently impossible puzzles and the core cast sign back on, this one should be good for more.

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