New series on weekly - thanks @mum2jakie for the shout out
Puzzle setter John ‘Ludwig’ Taylor’s life is upended when his identical twin, DCI James Taylor, disappears in the new series coming to BBC iPlayer and BBC One
When John ‘Ludwig’ Taylor’s (David Mitchell) identical twin, James, disappears off the face of the earth, John takes over his brother’s identity in a quest to discover his whereabouts.
John has never married, never had a family and never really ventured further than his own front door.
Without a computer, mobile phone or even a television, he lives in quiet solitude, designing puzzles for a living, under the nom-de-plume of ‘Ludwig’.
However, filling the shoes of your identical twin is one thing - when your twin also happens to be a successful DCI leading Cambridge’s busy inner-city major crimes team the stakes are much higher.
John may be a master of all things cryptic, but can he crack the biggest puzzle of his life?
Joining David Mitchell in the ‘case-of-the-week’ crime comedy-drama is Anna Maxwell Martin (Motherland, Line of Duty), as Lucy Betts-Taylor, John’s sister-in-law and wife of his missing brother James.
Also joining the cast are Dipo Ola (Landscapers, We Hunt Together), Gerran Howell (Catch-22, Suspicion), Izuka Hoyle (Boiling Point, Big Boys), Dylan Hughes (Malory Towers, Maternal), and Dorothy Atkinson (Mum, The Gold).
I think fundamentally it’s about the murders and the puzzle solving.
I think that’s what is so escapist and satisfying about this genre, the light meringue of a pleasing plot.
Another thing that I like about it is that it’s not gritty. It is cosy murder of the old school. So even though the crime at the centre would be an absolute abomination if it happened in real life, we all benefit from the murder-mystery convention - if you like, the Agatha Christie tradition – so we don’t dwell on what murder really is, on the horrific nature of the crime.
We focus on the context and the mystery and the play of human emotions that leads to it.
In Ludwig we don’t dwell on the fact that it’s murder any more than in a game of Cluedo you’d start thinking, ‘But how awful for Doctor Black’s family. He must be so missed.’