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What’s a milder cheese than mild cheddar? Philadelphia? Too glamorous. Primula in a tube? Too space-age. Let’s say Dairylea. BBC One’s new David Mitchell-starring detective series is the Dairylea triangle of crime TV: inoffensive in flavour, comfortingly nostalgic, and, once you’ve located and pulled on the little red string that peels apart the foil, really quite satisfying to unwrap.
Created by Mount Pleasant’s Mark Brotherhood, Ludwig is another entry in the ‘British oddball with a brilliant mind’ column of crime drama. Think Jonathan Creek but less lurid, Father Brown with less Catholicism, Death in Paradise but – owing to the Cambridgeshire setting – many fewer palm trees.
Ludwig is a good prospect to those of us who inhale the scent of new stationery like it’s freshly baked bread, and who, outside of home, are only able to move our bowels in the toilet of a branch of Waterstones. It stars the profoundly reassuring presence of David Mitchell and Anna Maxwell Martin, and even better than that: it’s about puzzles.
Mitchell plays John Taylor, a professional puzzle setter who publishes under the pen-name “Ludwig”. John lives alone in his childhood home and, after being dealt some early hard knocks, has very much closed the curtains on the world. When his identical twin brother James (yes, Sherlock, sometimes it is twins) goes missing, John is forced out of his routine by sister-in-law Lucy (Maxwell Martin), who recruits him to impersonate James in an attempt to find out what’s happened. Now here comes the genre format: James is a police detective.
The result is an overarching ‘what happened to James’ mystery, accompanied by several mini case-of-the-week murders, each of which John-as-James approaches using puzzle logic. Every episode winds up with the handful of suspects gathered in one place while John reveals the killer, who, helpfully, usually holds their hands up and volunteers an ‘it’s a fair cop, guv’ confession.
It is, let’s be frank, a preposterous premise and one that never explains why, if James was in such immediate danger that he had to disappear instantly and without a trace, the brother pretending to be him in public for several weeks remains unmolested. But who really cares. It’s nice. It’s unbarbed. It’s unchallenging, and it features guest appearances from Felicity Kendal and Derek Jacobi, like all TV broadcast in the months leading up to Christmas should.
The role is precision-engineered for Mitchell. He plays it buttoned up, anxious and exasperated, like he plays every character, from himself on Would I Lie to You to (probably) Police Officer Panda in Peppa Pig. The result is lightly comedic and quite charming. Introvert John is a less-than-slick operator whose impersonation of his more outgoing brother is always threatening collapse, while his uniquely logical perspective on the world makes him a whizz at deductions. Imagine Sherlock Holmes with no self confidence, or Mole from The Wind in the Willows with some, and you’re about there.
John’s rationality isn’t so much a unique selling point as something that helps to decide whereabouts to file him in the TV detective hall of fame. (Left at House, a good few rows behind fellow crossword-lover Morse). His interest in process rather than motive (“If we can demonstrate who did it and how, then the why doesn’t really matter.”) and “Isn’t it obvious?” catchphrase make him the latest in a long line of socially inept but brilliant British sleuths.
Maxwell Martin is good as sardonic, clever Lucy, and the supporting cast features likeable faces Dorothy Atkinson, Dipo Ola, Sophie Willan and Izuka Hoyle, with brief appearances from Ralph Ineson as the potentially shady top brass, Chief Constable Ziegler.
The cases themselves are neither stupidly obvious nor devilishly clever, and the crimes investigated all make for unthreatening viewing. You’ll have no nightmares here. It’s formulaic and lightly funny (depending on how hilarious you find bad driving), and were it not for the star power of Mitchell and Maxwell Martin, might well be seen otherwise unchanged airing on a weekday afternoon instead of in the 9pm slot.
That’s no slight, to be clear. Some of our best cosy crime is viewed in daylight hours. And sometimes, after a long day, a mild Dairylea triangle is far preferable to a challenging stilton.
All episodes of Ludwig will be available to stream on BBC iPlayer in the UK from Wednesday September 25.
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