Ludwig star David Mitchell breaks down show's Agatha Christie influences
"I like a murder mystery sort of puzzle, a whodunnit, but I don't love watching things that are horrific and gritty."
David Mitchell's new comedy drama series Ludwig is about to hit BBC One and BBC iPlayer, and while it has a highly specific set up, it's largely leaning on one of the oldest and most successful storytelling formats – the murder mystery.
In the series Mitchell plays John 'Ludwig' Taylor, a reclusive puzzle setter who is recruited by his sister-in-law Lucy, played by Anna Maxwell Martin, when his identical twin bother James goes missing.
James is a police detective, and in order to find out more about his disappearance, Lucy has John impersonate James at his workplace - what she didn't bank on is his incredible ability for crime solving.
"I've always loved murder mysteries," Mitchell said at a recent Q&A for Ludwig. "Some of my happiest viewing memories are as a child watching Miss Marple with Joan Hickson - I mean, she was in it, she wasn't in the room – and Inspector Morse, and that sort of thing. I love that kind of program.
"I think when it can have a comic spin as well, that's even better. Because I like a murder mystery sort of puzzle, a whodunnit, but I don't love watching things that are horrific and gritty and sort of remind you of the frailty of the human life.
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"I go with the Agatha Christie route - the person that was murdered, we don't meet them, we're not invested in them, so it's fine."
Mitchell continued: "It's just a puzzle. Agatha Christie, very good, kill an old Colonel, and the backstory is nobody liked him. So we can push aside what it means for a human life to be taken away.
"So we use it just to make a puzzle seem a little bit more interesting than if it was a snatched handbag."
Ludwig takes on a case of the week format, with an overarching storyline of John continuing the investigation into James's disappearance running alongside a murder he has to solve each episode.
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Mitchell revealed that the idea came to him as a pitch document from writer Mark Brotherhood pre-Covid, and that he immediately found the idea "funny and intriguing".
He explained: "I mean, the great thing about the twin thing is it's high concept, but it means you have a sort of classic comic scenario of John, going into a situation where he's a complete fish out of water, where you can maximise the extent to which he is not coping, but he isn't discovered because he has the superpower of looking absolutely identical to someone who belongs there.
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"So it gives tremendous comic scope, and I thought that was a great idea. And I loved the thought that it would be a weekly murder thing. So you get the overarching narrative, but you also get the reward of a puzzle, a murder each week. So I thought it was a great idea.
"Then the scripts came later, post-Covid. Scripts in general are quite boring to read, even if they're good scripts, because they're not meant to be read, they're meant to be filmed. But these scripts were page turners. Genuinely in every episode, I just sat there reading it, wanting to know what happened. And so instinctively, you sort of think ‘Well, that's good, isn't it?’
"So at every point, from the proposal through the scripts, I was more and more thinking, ‘This is great. I really hope it happens’. So I was in from the start. It was then question of someone agreeing to shoot it."
Ludwig is coming to BBC One and iPlayer on BBC One and iPlayer at 9pm on Wednesday 25th September.
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