Ludwig episode 1 sees John "Ludwig" Taylor (David Mitchell) thrown into the ultimate puzzle when his identical twin, James, disappears off the face of the earth. Here's everything that happened in the first episode (contains spoilers)...
Ludwig opens with a view of an office building being locked up for the night. The camera pans up and down the building, and everything is as you'd expect. However, when the camera pans back up we see that one of the office dwellers is now a bloodied corpse! And then the clever crossword title sequence begins…
We see John "Ludwig" Taylor enjoying his breakfast and looking at a crossword and chess puzzle, both of which he rapidly completes. John owns a lot of pencils but not a television or a computer it seems. We see a wedding snap with John, his identicial twin brother James, and James's wife Lucy Betts-Taylor (Anna Maxwell Martin). He then starts and finishes setting a puzzle.
Where is James?
His phone (landline) rings and it's Lucy. She says she needs a big favour which involves John leaving the house and getting the taxi she's booked for him. John seems outraged by having a taxi outside his door and Lucy explains it's the only way she can get him to Cambridge. It's clear he's a man of rigid routines.
His unfortunate cab driver quickly learns he must drive John in silence. John arrives at Lucy's. We see a flashback to John as a child in the backseat of a car studying a crossword puzzle book. Young John explains to his mother that he's dirty because he got pushed over, unlike James. Young James looks rather smug.
Back in the present day, Lucy welcomes John, calling him the "Elvis Presley of puzzle setters". His brother's son Henry (Dylan Hughes) comes down the stairs and greets him as Uncle John. John asks where James is and Henry says he's away on a case but Lucy looks tense.
Lucy sits John down to explain why she's dragged him up to Cambridge. She starts talking about her DCI husband and the grisly murder scenes he was involved in and John is disturbed she's talking in the past tense. She says for the last two months he wasn't himself, she explains, and something about that case changed him. He wouldn't communicate with his family and locked himself away.
She says three nights ago he didn't come home at all! The next day she explains she received an envelope from him marked B.A.R. — burn after reading. Inside of that is another envelope marked to his boss with a letter of resignation. Also, there's a list of instructions to Lucy: post the letter of resignation, get Henry, and leave the house. Lucy complains to John that James "doesn't feel the need to tell me why or where we're supposed to go". The instructions add that Lucy shouldn't meet or talk to or believe anyone from his department.
Lucy explains she can't find his tatty orange notebook and believes it could be at the police station in his office. It's clear where this is going… yes, Lucy wants John to pretend to be James to access his office and she presents him with James's police badge.
John flatly refuses. He says it's illegal and James wouldn't abandon his family as he knows what that feels like (hint here that their father abandoned them). For an awful moment, Lucy thinks John is saying he loves her but then he reveals he's spotted the phrase hidden in the letter.
John agrees to Lucy's plan and she hugs him. The next morning Lucy inspects John's clothes, removes some pens from his jacket, and sends him on his way in James's car — which he struggles to drive.
It turns out John’s mobile phone is 20 years old! It beeps and there's a good luck message from Lucy. John's terrified as he walks into the noisy police building. We flashback to Lucy briefing John on who everyone is in the department including DCS Carol Shaw (Dorothy Atkinson), the person Lucy is meant to have posted James’s resignation letter to. Lucy later also mentions DI Matt Neville, who James has worked with for 10 years and she says he's the only one John can trust. John shares an incredibly awkward journey in a lift with a woman who knows her brother but he has no idea who she is. Now on the right floor, John tries to make his way to James's office without talking to anyone.
DI Russell Carter (Dipo Ola) spies John and says "There you are guv". He says some big shot solicitor guy has been found with an antique letter opener stuck in his chest and has been there all weekend apparently. John massively missteps when he says he needs to get his gun from his office before quickly saying gum! John is left with no choice but to go with Russell. Russell explains everyone signed out of the building including the victim.
John calls Lucy and says that there's no Matt and he has a completely different cop partner who's waiting for him to see the body of a dead solicitor. Lucy says he has no choice but to wing it and suggests lots of delegating.
After a spot of bother getting his leg over the police tape, Russell leads him upstairs to the body. Now at the scene, he meets DC Simon Evans (Gerran Howell), the youngest member of the team, who, according to Lucy, enjoys graphic novels and lives with his mum.
John is taken to the dead body where he meets DS Alice Finch (Izuka Hoyle) for the first time. Lucy has filled John in that she's the class swat and is highly ambitious. Her theory is that it's a professional hit, she says they need to look if he was working any big criminal trials. Meanwhile, John glances at the body and then hastily looks away. John spots that the victim did conveyancing law and Russell replies that he's unlikely to have been involved in big criminal trials, "maybe a disgruntled estate agent" is the killer, teases Russell.
John is then taken to the conference room packed with all the suspects. He learns the victim is called Alan and the building has three different companies working across three different floors. One of the suspects, Brian, seems particularly agitated and claims someone broke in while the fire alarm went off at 5.03 pm, just after someone called the office from an unregistered number. All the suspects start talking at once like young kids in class, and John rushes out to get some air.
John discovers who the murderer is
Outside the building, he calls Lucy and says he's had enough and wants to go home. He says it's easier for James to cope with the world because he is with Lucy. She says she remembers the day his father left and John corrects her that it was nighttime. As he talks he starts looking through the crime case file and starts getting interested. "I've got to go, a bit awkward really I think I might just have just solved a murder. I'll call you back".
John, warming to the task, is now in the conference room with the seven suspects and declares the murder is a logic puzzle. He says they have three facts: the fire door alarm, the phone call, and the murder itself. He labels the suspects from A to G, the facts 1 to 3. Then a third column, T to Z, with the alleged movements of the suspects. He then starts cross-referencing the statements eliminating suspects whose movements are confirmed as true by the statements of others. Young Simon rushes down the stairs and tells Alice she's going to want to see what John is doing.
John concludes there's only one person who could have been at events 1,2 and 3 — opening the fire door to create a distraction thus giving the killer an opportunity to forge the victim's signature before making the telephone call to delay the victim's departure and finally making their way up the stairwell just as the last of the people were leaving.
"Therefore we have our killer," says John to a stunned room. Russell: "And that person is?” John: "Well B… oh sorry, Sarah Gilmarsh". Sarah quickly breaks down and says she's sorry. She claims not to have planned the murder, to which John points out she certainly did. Sarah then says she didn't want any of this to happen to which John retorts she probably shouldn’t have done it then!
Everyone is stunned! And the young sergeant arrests Sarah. "Is it ok if we go back to the police station now?" asks John.
Russell, who's only been at the station for two weeks, is full of praise for John, who looks a bit stunned still. Back at the station and finally in his brother's office, John finds the notebook. But is then called back into the open planned office where he gets a round of applause for cracking the murder.
It's revealed that it was a crime of passion and they have a full confession. His "boss" says he went off standard procedure but she's impressed by the result. Then suddenly the chief constable turns up. John is terrified by his "boss" who comments he seems to have a new look — the pens in his jacket!
The woman he saw in the lift watches as John makes a hash of leaving the car park. He arrives back at Lucy's. "That was quite the puzzle convention," says John for Henry's benefit. Lucy reveals the phone code was the date that John's dad left. Lucy says there's a picture she doesn't recognize on the phone, John says it's Chief Constable Ziegler.
John shows Lucy his brother's notebook and says it contains a cipher but he hasn’t cracked it. He says he needs more data and will go back to the police station. Meanwhile, Henry discovers his dad's letter and realizes he's gone. We then get flashbacks to John's mum crying after his dad left.
John sets about cracking the code and creates a suspect board of the officers at the police station...
All six episodes of Ludwig are available now on BBC iPlayer.
