The Charming 'Ludwig' is TV’s Latest Maverick Crime Solver

TV loves a maverick crime solver. ABC has a hit with High Potential, which finds cleaning woman Morgan Gillory (Kaitlin Gillory) using her extraordinary IQ and memory retention to solve crimes in Los Angeles. Over at CBS, the title character in Elsbeth (Carrie Preston), leverages her quirky powers of observation to help the NYPD crack the case. On NBC’s Found, former kidnapping victim Gabi (Shanola Hampton) uses her kidnapper to help her locate missing persons. In Peacock’s Poker Face, a charming nod to the OG maverick crime solver Columbo, Charlie (Natasha Lyonne) can tell when people are lying, which means she always knows whodunit. 

Viewers love to watch the unexpected person catch the criminal. Enter BritBox’s utterly delightful and intriguing Ludwig, which premieres with two episodes. Already a hit in Britain, where it has been renewed for a second season, the series follows John ‘Ludwig’ Taylor (David Mitchell), a quiet, solitary man with a successful career creating puzzles — crosswords, sudoku, brain teasers. Ever since he was bullied as a child and abandoned by his father, puzzles have brought him comfort. 

Ludwig is a man of extreme order. He has the same meals every week. His only cell phone is the one his sister-in-law Lucy (Anna Maxwell Martin) gave him 20 years ago. He doesn’t understand computers.“If it were up to me, everything would be logical. The whole world. But it isn’t. It doesn’t work that way,” he tells Lucy. 

Ludwig’s life is turned upside down when Lucy calls him because her husband, James, Ludwig’s twin brother, is missing. Not wanting to alarm her son Henry (Dylan Hughes), she tells him his uncle is there for a puzzle convention. She explains to Ludwig that James, a police officer, has been acting strangely for the last two months, and three nights ago, he didn’t come home at all. He left his wife a note telling her to submit his resignation, get their son, and leave town. He warns her that if anyone from his police department tries to contact her, she should not talk to them, meet with them, or believe them.” 

“Does anything about that letter strike you as odd,” she asks her brother-in-law. “Yes! Everything! It’s the single most terrifying thing I’ve ever read in my life,” he replies. Ludwig realizes a coded message (“I love you. Always have. ") to Lucy is embedded in the letter. 

Lucy wants Ludwig to pretend to be James and go to his office in the police station to see what he’s been working on and get his notebook. She promises he won’t have to talk to anyone. Lucy tells him everyone who will be at the police station. DCS Carol Shaw (Dorothy Atkinson) is James’ supervisor. DC Simon Evans (Gerran Howell), who still lives with his mother, is the team's youngest member. DC Alice Finch (Izuka Hoyle) is brazenly ambitious. “This feels like a six-part docudrama big,” she says of their latest case. There’s only one problem—James has a new partner, Russell Carter (Dipo Ola), whom he never told his wife about. 

Before Ludwig can even get to James’ office, Russell is dragging him off to investigate the murder of a solicitor. Ludwig quickly realizes the case is just a puzzle waiting to be solved, and with that, the series settles into its format. Each episode will involve a crime (which we see at the top of the episode) and Ludwig using his puzzle skills to catch the bad guy. The second case consists of the murder of a man who has had four failed businesses in six years. When his car is found by a cliff, everyone wants to rule it as a suicide. But Ludwig isn’t convinced. “Something is very, very wrong here, and none of them are able to see it,” he says. He notices that the wallpaper has shifted ever so slightly and that the missing man’s body is decaying inside the wall. 

The overarching mystery, which will play out over the six-episode series, is precisely why James disappeared. Ludwig figures out his brother’s last case was about someone named Sinclair. And that the last thing James did was call a number from his computer. The number turns out to be a fax number. Henry reminds his mom that James still has a fax machine. James had faxed himself a copy of the Sinclair report. Except for the one he faxed, which is different from the official report that has been filed. The official report says a burglar murdered Sinclair. But that’s not what the report that James initially filed says. His report says nothing about a burglar. 

Lucy is convinced her husband is still alive. “He’s my husband and my soulmate, and I would feel it,” she tells Henry. While Ludwig realizes his brother left them many, many clues. “James didn’t just vanish; he left breadcrumbs, coded messages, and a puzzle. His disappearance was prepared in advance by him,” he tells Lucy. There’s also the issue of James’s partner Matt Neville. When Lucy goes to his house, she learns Matt and his family have moved away. The mysterious Chief Constable Ziegler (Ralph Ineson) is somehow involved, too. Ludwig just isn’t sure how yet. 

Lucy is surprised that Ludwig, who was initially so reluctant to impersonate his brother, is keen to keep going back to the police station. “I have to. It's a puzzle. Puzzles are meant to be solved.” I can’t wait to see Ludwig solve some more. 

Ludwig continues with one new episode every Thursday on BritBox. Season 2 is already greenlit.