“Ludwig,” streaming on BritBox, stars David Mitchell as a reclusive puzzle setter who solves mysteries. And then the world makes sense again.
In the opening scene of the detective show “Ludwig,” the camera pans up and down the floors of a glass office building while jaunty music plays on the soundtrack. Employees chat as they pack up and leave for the day, and then we reach an upper level, where a man in a button-down shirt and slacks is sprawled on the floor, an ornate knife sticking out of his chest.
When the comedian David Mitchell read this first page of the show’s script last year, he immediately thought, “This aesthetic is exactly what I want,” he said in a recent interview. “It just felt — which is weird to say when it involves someone being murdered — but it felt fun.”
When “Ludwig,” starring Mitchell in the lead role, aired in Britain late last year, viewers seemed to agree: Nearly 10 million people tuned in, making it the BBC’s most popular new scripted program in years.
In the show, which comes to BritBox in the United States on Thursday, Mitchell plays the kind of endearingly unworldly, fiercely intelligent character that has made him a household name in Britain.
His character, John, is a reclusive genius who lives alone, setting crosswords and other brain teasers under the pen name Ludwig. His identical twin brother, James, got married, had a son and is working as a police detective — but then James disappears, leaving his wife Lucy (Anna Maxwell Martin) a cryptic note.
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Source: Television - nytimes.com
