David Mitchell … well, look. Nobody is ever going to accuse him of being “an actor with range”, are they? Perhaps this is my own fault, for rewatching his turn as Mark in Peep Show so many times I can recite deep quotes of it in my sleep (“the first friend I’ve made since Nick Bickford in 1996”). Perhaps it is also a little bit his fault for playing more or less the same character in Back, Greed, Upstart Crow and, if you think about it, every single episode of Would I Lie to You?. But that’s what David Mitchell is world-beatingly good at: blurting out “Oh, God, no!” when three minor inconveniences stack up in the same 30 minutes; apologising meekly for losing his temper but not really meaning it at all; saying “Sorry, but ah – ” and turning around Columbo-style on the spot to correct someone; sweating when forced to talk to another person.
This sounds like criticism, but it isn’t: I don’t mind actors playing more or less the same character when those characters are good and the scenario suits them. That’s exactly what’s happened here with Ludwig (25 September, 9pm, BBC One), which is the absolute perfect platform for David Mitchell to David Mitchell on top of.
The set-up is just so delicious: Mitchell plays John Taylor, an introverted, possibly-a-bit-OCD, agoraphobic puzzle-setter, and twin to James Taylor, a mysteriously vanished detective with a wife and teenage kid. John has to infiltrate James’s Cambridge police department, find his notebook and start to unspool the cyphers and clues that have been left behind to try to solve his disappearance, all while making awkward small talk with a series of unknowingly trustworthy colleagues. And then the kicker, of course, is that John is phenomenally good at solving the puzzles of the various murders that keep happening across Cambridge, so he keeps getting waylaid.
Each episode is a puzzle within a puzzle: the wider arc is “Where’s James, then?” but there’s always a body in the centre of each hour-long episode, and watching Davi– sorry, John, figure them out just slaps a big, goofy smile on the face of anyone watching. There is a moment 40 minutes into the first episode that made me laugh out loud the most I have at anything on TV all year. All year!
As ever, it really helps when the supporting cast are excellent. As James’s wife and John’s childhood friend Lucy, Anna Maxwell Martin is stupendous – she’s trying to sleuth her way around town while juggling the in-your-throat grief-panic of a departed husband and the strange huge reality of having a teenage boy in your house.
James/John’s new partner, the not-sure-if-you-can-trust-him Russell Carter, is played by Dipo Ola at a perfect frequency. Izuka Hoyle is a detective sergeant with head girl energy, Gerran Howell is the wide-eyed wunderkind, and Dorothy Atkinson prowls around her office with a strangely charged vibe that bounces brilliantly off a good Mitchelling.
All of this would be fine and a little Sunday teatime-y if it weren’t for a sharp script (by Mount Pleasant’s Mark Brotherhood), an enjoyably cinematic aesthetic and a dead-on balance of conspiracy and tone (I cannot remember the last time I watched a detective drama and thought: “This is actually funny”).
Ludwig isn’t the kind of weekly procedural murder mystery you can, particularly, solve: there aren’t overlong interviews with suspects, there aren’t pointless red herrings and misdirects, there aren’t “we got him in a cell, he’s confessed … so what’s bothering you, guv?” conversations in cars. This is good for me because I hate all of those. Instead, it’s scratching an itch that’s somewhere a little more Jonathan Creek, a little more Inside No 9: the solution is always through an unguessably obscure hidden door, and what actually makes the show fun to watch is seeing John throw himself up against the bizarre scenario he’s found himself in rather than you, personally, trying to keep track of everyone’s alibis and motives.
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Listen: we’re not reinventing the wheel of “David Mitchell”, here. He’s basically Peep Show’s Mark if Mark ever found something in his life that he liked. But when it’s this good, I do find it a bit beyond me to care. He’s called “John” now. Deal with it.
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