‘Ludwig’: David Mitchell Reveals Season 2’s ‘Terrifying Villain’ Who Changes Everything
Exclusive
What To Know
- Season 2 of Ludwig premieres with John now officially working as a Crime Scene Consultant.
- The season introduces Sian Clifford as local MP Joanne Kemper.
- John, Lucy, and Henry continue their covert search for James amid new team dynamics.
After a hit first season in the United Kingdom and the United States, Ludwig returns with Season 2 on October 13 on BritBox. Picking up from the end of season one, expert puzzle-maker John “Ludwig” Taylor (David Mitchell) is now a Crime Scene Consultant, working alongside DCI Russell Carter (Dipo Ola), on “impossible” crimes for the Cambridge Police Authority.
His new job is really just the one he held in the first season, except this time he doesn’t have to pretend he is his missing twin brother, James. However, that’s not making the secret investigation easier. It’s just shifting the secrets — and taking away resources, despite the gainful employment. Here, Mitchell gives us an inside look at Ludwig Season 2.
As an official employee of the station, John is forbidden from using any police resources to look for his brother or uncover exactly what he was investigating at the time of his disappearance. But that won’t stand for John and his sister-in-law/best friend Lucy (Anna Maxwell Martin). A puzzle needs solving, and a husband and father needs bringing home. One masquerade may have ended, but a new one has just begun.
Lucy takes matters into her own hands by becoming a journalist while she and Ludwig investigate a potential cover-up in the curious case of the disappearing detective. Enter Fleabag‘s Sian Clifford as local MP, Joanne Kemper, who Mitchell says is the big, “terrifying villain” of the season.
Ludwig has already been renewed for Season 3. Mitchell teases what to expect in Ludwig Season 2 in the interview below.
In Season 2, there’s still this ongoing mystery about James, but John can’t use the resources at the precinct to find him. What can you say about how far they get in the search for James this season, given that you’re already renewed for Season 3?
David Mitchell: All I can say is the mystery of what James disappeared to investigate is revealed to a considerable extent. And you get more of a sense of the conspiracy that exists in Cambridge, and that the center of it is the sinister figure of the local MP played by Sian Clifford, who is a terrifying villain and a brilliant addition to the cast. So she becomes the focus of everyone’s investigations this series, and they find out quite a lot, and some surprising things happen.
Sian Clifford as MP Joanne Kemper (BBC / Big Talk Studios / Olly Courtney)
It sounds like the world is really expanding then in Season 2.
Yes. Yes, it is. And obviously in a way, things are easier for John because he doesn’t have to pretend to be James in front of his close colleagues, but he has to keep up the lie that the person that solved all the crimes in the first series was James and has to try and keep out the way of [Chief Constable Ziegler, played by Ralph Ineson] who’s asking inconvenient questions about whereabout James has disappeared to. John obviously doesn’t know the answer to that question, but he does know that he, in fact, disappeared several weeks earlier than Chief Constable thinks he did.
The secret is out, but there’s a new one replacing it, so it’s not like things got easier.
Exactly.
As you said, he’s not in disguise anymore. How does this change how Ludwig interacts with his colleagues?
Well, he trusts Russell Carter, his immediate colleague, more and more, although he still continues to lie to him because I suppose he doesn’t completely trust him. Also, there are two new police officers in the team who he’s very wary of and know nothing about his impersonation of James, but do know that he’s in fact the puzzle-setter Ludwig and just there in the capacity of a consultant. And so they’re slightly bemused by how much authority he has in the mind of their immediate superiors because they don’t know that he’s solved all these previous crimes.
Ben Ashenden (Ethan Cole), Rumi Sutton (Caitlin Sullivan), Dipo Ola (Russell Carter), David Mitchell (Ludwig), Dorothy Atkinson (Carol Shaw), and Ralph Ineson (Chief Constable Ziegler) (BBC / Big Talk Studios / Olly Courtney)
They just think he’s some member of the public who’s been invited in for no good reason that they can think of. So that’s quite a funny dynamic. Rumi Sutton, who plays [DC Caitlin Sullivan], her character warms to John more quickly, but Ben Ashenden, who plays [DC Ethan Cole], thinks it’s an absolute diabolical liberty that he has to even listen to this random member of the public, let alone drive him around and have the investigation led by his theories. But there’s not much he can do about it because Russell Carter instinctively defers to John because, to be fair, John usually knows the answer.
It takes the whole [season] for the other one to let their guard down. And one of the odd things about John is he’s so insecure in so many ways, but actually when he’s solving a puzzle, he finds this unshakeable confidence, and he’s very impatient if things don’t develop in exactly the way he wants. He might be very shy one minute, and then the next minute he’s just ordering them around and forgetting that he isn’t and never has been a genuine Chief Inspector.
How else has Ludwig changed this season?
The overarching mystery has definitely developed, but I’m hoping that overall it’s delivering what it did before, which is a weekly intrigue that gives a certain amount of resolution, but something to come back for next week. I see it as analogous to, you know, that game Pass the Parcel from children’s parties?
There were two ways of doing Pass the Parcel when I was little. There was the ones where there was lots of layers of wrapping paper and a present in the middle, and there are the ones where there were lots of layers of wrapping paper and a small present in each layer. So if the music stopped at you and you unwrapped a layer, you still got something. I like to think that Ludwig is like that type of Pass the Parcel. So in each episode, there’s a small present of a resolved mystery, and then in the middle of the parcel is the big resolution.
BBC / Big Talk Studios / Amanda Searle
I love that analogy. And then what about Ludwig, the guy himself? How has he evolved in Season 2?
He’s slightly more confident, I think. He’s finding interacting with people a bit easier. I think he’s enjoying family life in a way that I think surprises him and probably saddens him on some level because it makes him realize the extent to which he is comfortable with the closeness with other people that he has rejected his whole life.
Obviously he’s very, very fond of Lucy. They’re very old friends, and it’s a weird situation where her husband who looks identical to him has just disappeared. But it’s been a weird situation since essentially John’s best friend married his twin brother. That oddity, it’s only brought to the surface again by their situation. But I think fundamentally, John likes being with his family members, and he likes being in a house with other people where someone will make him a coffee and talk to him and that sort of thing. He isn’t necessarily as the natural hermit that he thought he was.
And of course his nephew, Lucy’s son, Henry [Dylan Walsh], is in on the shenanigans as well. How do they as a trio work to find James?
John is very protective of Henry, and also he thinks that Henry is a representative of a hysterical and paranoid younger generation who believe everything they read on the internet. So the direction is always Henry going, “No, look, it’s this, it’s massive,” and John being skeptical. But actually, as often as not, Henry’s paranoia is justified in the unraveling of the greater mystery. Something very weird is going on, and there’ve been various unexplained deaths, and the internet explanations aren’t necessarily as untrue as you’d hope, and that develops.
BBC / Big Talk Studios / Olly Courtney
Do you think Henry might take after his uncle a little bit in that way, since he’s recognizing some patterns that John is maybe missing?
Well, there’s a line at one point that Lucy, whose surname is Betts, says to Henry, “I’m so glad that you take after the Betts, not the Taylor side.” So she would definitely see him as the more “normal,” more naturally interactive, more empathic on that side of the family rather than the cold logic of either John or James.
Tell me about Stephen Merchant’s character in Episode 4.
Oh, yes. We’re very excited to have him in the show. He’s a brilliant comedian and an old friend of mine, and he was terrific and funny and sinister. His episode is set in the world of — it’s not as popular a sport in America as it is here — Snooker. The game’s played on a billiard table, which much televised over here. And he was a big star, his character’s a big Snooker star several decades earlier. The mystery in that episode centers around the recreation of a great Snooker clash of 20 years earlier, and is in the context of a bitter rivalry between two players in the insular world of this sport.
I’m a fan of Snooker, and in fact, back when I was doing a BBC sketch show with Robert Webb, we’d do a series of sketches about Snooker commentators. So I was very comfortable in that world, and we got to film in a Snooker club for a week or so. Stephen was very believable as a brilliant former professional Snooker player whose life hasn’t quite worked out as gloriously as he’d expected.
BBC / Big Talk Studios / Justin Downing
Do you think Ludwig’s a big Snooker fan?
No, the fact that it’s ostensibly a sport has put him off it, but he assumes at the beginning of the episode that he must be able to play Snooker because, as far as he’s concerned, it’s basic Newtonian physics. You just hit the ball at the right angle, and it’ll go in the pocket. But he soon finds out that the practicalities of the game are a bit trickier than that.
Is there anything about this season that you’d like to highlight that we haven’t discussed so far?
Oh, in the first episode, which is set in a murder in a theater, which is very appetizing, it’s got two brilliant comic actresses, Doon Mackichan and Rebecca Front, who were in a BBC show, a terrific spoof news show in the ’90s called The Day-to-Day. I don’t know if you’re familiar with it, but I would heartedly recommend it. They’ve done loads of work over the years, but they were reunited for the first time since that show and playing two sisters suspected of murder. It was brilliant to have them in the show. It’s a great start to the run.
Ludwig, Season 2 Premiere, Tuesday, October 13, BritBox
Watchlist Easy access to only the shows you care about — all in one simple place
Alerts Only important notifications — when a show is returning, when it becomes available to stream, and more.
Special Offers Exclusive products we release related to your favorite shows and streaming services