David Mitchell Talks Mysteries, Cryptic Crosswords & 'Ludwig'

We haven’t even reached the Spring Equinox yet, and David Mitchell is already having a great 2025, with one brand-new murder mystery series set to debut as he’s shooting episodes for another new series, an as-yet-untitled sketch comedy show with his longtime collaborator Robert Webb. Ludwig will arrive first, debuting on BritBox on Thursday, March 20, 2025, with its first season of cozy/sad/sprightly/faintly noir murders set in Cambridge; the series was such a success in the U.K. that it’s already been renewed for a second season. 

Mitchell’s Ludwig character, John Taylor, finds himself literally and metaphorically miles outside his comfort zone. The socially reluctant word-and-logic puzzle creator is dragooned into leaving home at the urgent behest of his sister-in-law, Lucy (Anna Maxwell Martin). She’s gone so far as to send a car to ferry him the 150 miles or so to Cambridge, where he learns that his identical twin brother James has disappeared, with no explanation and for seemingly no reason. Although he’d much rather be at home, hewing to his beloved schedule of puzzle development and Sunday night cooking, he can’t ignore Lucy’s distress. He agrees to impersonate James at work to gather more information about where he may have gone and why. 

Things escalate quickly, as they will in a murder mystery strongly influenced by comedies of errors. Impersonating James at work doesn’t just entail the standard imitation of his habits or sifting through the files on his desktop because while James does have an office, he is also a homicide detective. John finds that the skills he relies on for creating his devilishly complex puzzles apply very well to solving murders, which is excellent for his department’s case clearance rate, if not quite as promising for his and Lucy’s continuing quest to figure out where James is and why.

During a break on his new comedy series set, Mitchell spoke with Telly Visions via Zoom, despite having a strange wig on as part of the scene they were shooting. As he assured us, the Morrissey-style quiff from the 80s he sported was "not a new look.... but who knows after I've had it on for a few hours?"

The following interview has been edited for length and clarity. 

Telly Visions: Let's tuck in straight away with games and puzzles, though: what role have they played in your life? 

David Mitchell: I like a cryptic crossword, and I've found these small gaps in filming are perfect for trying to solve a crossword clue, and there's not much else you can do with that time. I've never been able to get on with Sudoku because I'm never interested in the answer. It's going to be a number. Okay? Seven. With a crossword, though, I'm very much biased in favor of words, so I prefer a puzzle like that, but I’ll confess straight away that I can't claim to be a fanatic puzzle fan on the same level as the character I'm playing in Ludwig. 

TV: Do you have a favorite cryptic crossword you look forward to solving in those moments? 

DM: My favorite is the Everyman crossword in The Observer, a Sunday newspaper over here. They have two cryptic crosswords, The Everyman and the AZ. The AZ is too difficult for me, but I do the Everyman every week. They also have a non-cryptic crossword, which I disdain. I only do cryptic crosswords.

TV: For the person who’s never tried to solve a cryptic crossword, what makes them special? What do they have that regular ones don't?

DM: Well, I think my feeling is that a standard crossword is just asking you for synonyms, so to a certain extent, you either know the answer, or you don't, and if you don't, it isn't very pleasant. Whereas with a cryptic clue, you can try to crack it. 

The other thing with the cryptic clue is when you've got it right, you know it's right. There are times with a synonym-based crossword where there might be, for example, two five-letter words that mean broadly the same thing. In that case, you only know if you've got the right one and if you've solved the cross clues correctly. With cryptic crosswords, if you've got the correct answer, you know you've got it. You could argue that it's better to have other clues. I understand it cuts both ways. But I like to have a bit of solidity, and with a cryptic crossword, I've got that.

TV: Lest we spend the rest of our time only talking about crosswords, I’ve been thinking about your performance, particularly when you’re on screen with Anna Maxwell Martin. Her character, Lucy, is John's sister-in-law. The two of you have this lovely banter and the ease that comes with 30+ years of friendship, but there's this profound well of melancholy. Did you and Anna have a conversation about it? 

DM: Well, no, we didn't talk about it. You're right, but I've not heard anyone express it that way. In John, there’s a deep sadness about what he's done with his life, or maybe not what he's done with it, but what he hasn't done with it. There's the sense that she represents choices he hasn't made because we don't know whether they could ever have been a couple. 

I'll have to wait and see what the future scripts say, but obviously, the twins were her close friends, and then she married one of them, and the one she married became a police officer, and the one she didn't marry became a reclusive puzzle setter. John reflects on that, and I don't know whether he's entirely content that he made those choices consciously. So that's where his sadness comes from. He has, to a certain extent, retreated from the world, and this moment where he has to advance back into it is where he realizes that. 

TV: What did you think of Lucy’s frame of mind? 

DM: For Lucy, it's obvious why her circumstances are suddenly sad. Her husband disappeared, and she's trying to deal with that fact and, to a certain extent, conceal it from their son. I think we get the odd sense that they had a good marriage, but not a perfect marriage; I believe in the future series, we’ll learn more about that and more about what circumstances led James to disappear.  

It's interesting that that sense of melancholy came out so forcefully to you because I think you're right, but we didn't discuss it. Anna was fun to work with, but we didn't talk much about the characters or the story. We just talked about stupid things, and then we did the scene. 

TV: Let’s talk about your relationship with mystery as a genre. Are you much of a mystery watcher or reader?

DM: As a TV viewer, I grew up loving detective shows like Poirot and Miss Marple, Inspector Morse, and the Jeremy Brett Sherlock Holmes. That kind of show is my comfort viewing, so I was delighted to do one. I also like detective novels, and I'm a big fan of the Maigret books by Georges Simenon; they make for terrific holiday reading. I have always loved a murder mystery in any format. 

TV: Do you have any current favorites? What have you been watching and loving recently? 

DM: Well, I do love Only Murders in The Building. That was very much on our minds as a show – we worried and wondered, Is it okay to have Ludwig be this show all about murders... But it's also trying to be funny? We reminded ourselves that people love Only Murders in The Building. I think it's brilliant. 

Another one I’m enjoying at the moment, with its new season, isn’t quite a murder in the same way, but it has the same feel: The White Lotus. I like that show because it's genuinely mysterious. You don't know which way it's going to go. There's such a sense of twinkling darkness surrounding it, which makes it very watchable.

TV: There are so many murder mystery series that are super long-running. What are your thoughts on Ludwig having a 25-season run like Midsomer Murders? 

DM: Well, I think 25 seasons might be pushing it, but we'd certainly like to do it for a few years and see how it feels. I don't know whether we'll aim even to rival Midsomer Murders in that kind of longevity, but we want the story to carry on. We want to find a way to keep the characters solving mysteries. That's the big challenge for [series creator] Mark Brotherhood as the writer. He has to keep the overarching narrative alive and going and resolve it, but not entirely resolve it. 

TV: Did you have a favorite murder that John solved with his colleagues who don't know that he isn’t James?

DM: I genuinely love all of the mysteries, but I think the one in the last episode where it's suddenly very much applicable to John’s own life, and he has to try to solve it without actually going to the scene of the crime. The escalation of circumstances and putting more and more pressure on John, but he's broadly still doing the same thing – that was very beautifully written by Brotherhood. 

He still manages to keep it funny! It’s funny that John is in the office, charging around these cardboard boxes, but it's also really important that he gets it right. So I think that was my favorite one this season.

TV: That makes sense for you as a cryptic crossword lover, it's sort of like the culmination of stuff that's come before, and then once you've got it right, you know you've got it right.

Ludwig Season 1 debuts on BritBox with two episodes on Thursday, March 20, 2025, followed by one installment a week through April. Season 2 is already greenlit and is expected to debut on BritBox in 2026.