PUZZLING times

DAVID MITCHELL on playing a puzzle-setter who must turn crime-solver

- CAREN CLARK

LUDWIG

NEW WEDNESDAY, 9PM, BBC1 COMEDY DRAMA (BOX SET, BBC IPLAYER)

Ingenious puzzles, an unsettling disappearance and identical twins with a troubled past are at the heart of BBC1's comic crime drama Ludwig, in which David Mitchell fulfils his lifelong dream of playing a TV detective.

'I've always loved murder mysteries, so I thought, "This is the one!" beams the Would I Lie to You? star as TV Times joins him for an exclusive interview at a London hotel. "The young me would be thrilled and so is the "now" me!"

The six-part series sees David as highly intelligent, Beethoven-loving John Taylor, who works as a puzzlesetter under the pen name 'Ludwig'. But hermit-like, awkward John must step into a challenging new world when his sister-in-law and childhood pal Lucy (Motherland's Anna Maxwell Martin) asks him to help find her husband James, John's twin, a brilliant detective in Cambridge, who has inexplicably vanished.

John reluctantly agrees to pretend to be James and infiltrate his brother's police station to obtain clues about his disappearance. But John soon gets drawn into his sibling's busy work life and must use his skills at working out puzzles to solve a variety of crimes.

Here, David, 50, tells us more about the intriguing investigations...

JOHN 'LUDWIG' TAYLOR

PLAYED BY DAVID MITCHELL

The puzzle-setter realises his talent for detection when he pretends to be his missing twin,cop James.

Lucy describes John as the 'Elvis Presley of puzzle-setters'. Why do riddles appeal to him?