On streaming platforms today, detective shows aren’t exactly hard to find. From ABC’s latest hit High Potential to the classic Law & Order: SVU, these are shows that have viewers immersed in episodic cases, from the crime to its resolution, and deliver the perfect balance of mystery and satisfaction by the end. But while the category isn’t exactly niche, it’s rare to find a series that gives something new to the genre, and sometimes even turns it on its head.
First premiered on September 25, 2024, Ludwig is a BBC production that has a classic detective structure and will giving its own spin on the genre viewers know and love. The series, starring British comedy legend David Mitchell (Peep Show), holds an impressive 98% on Rotten Tomatoes from critics and is certainly a must-watch.
What Is ‘Ludwig’ About?
The series kicks off when reclusive master puzzle setter John “Ludwig” Taylor (Mitchell), a man who spends his days away from screens and technology only to build elaborate puzzles, is approached by his sister-in-law, Lucy (Anna Maxwell Martin). She reveals that his twin brother, James, is missing, and that Ludwig is the only person who can find him. Her plan is for Ludwig to do a classic twin swap à la Parent Trap and pretend to be James to find what happened to him. James, however, is a Detective Inspector of Cambridge’s police department.
Accepting the challenge, Ludwig impersonates his brother, returns to the police force and stumbles his way into being a detective. And while he’s queasy at the sight of blood, socially awkward to the point of being painful, and terrible at parking his brother’s beloved vintage car, Ludwig’s puzzle-filled mind becomes an unexpected talent when solving crimes. By approaching every crime like a puzzle, Ludwig shows just how much his new police team can benefit from his unusual mind, solving every case with math, with scatter plots, with graphs and charts and puzzle patterns. Therefore, while an overarching mystery of James’ disappearance develops over time, each episode sees Ludwig put his puzzle brain to work solving cases one at a time.
Collider Exclusive · Action Hero Quiz Which Action Hero Would Be Your Perfect Partner? Rambo · James Bond · Indiana Jones · John McClane · Ethan Hunt
Five legends. Five completely different ways of getting out alive — with style, with muscle, with charm, with luck, or with a plan so intricate it probably shouldn’t work. Ten questions will reveal which action hero was built to have your back.
🎖️Rambo
🍸James Bond
🏺Indiana Jones
🔧John McClane
🎭Ethan Hunt
01
You’re dropped into a dangerous situation with no warning. What do you need most from a partner? The first few seconds tell you everything about who belongs beside you.
02
You have to get somewhere dangerous, fast. How do you travel? How you get there is half the mission.
03
You’re pinned down and outnumbered. What does your ideal partner do? This is when you find out what someone is really made of.
04
The mission is paused. You have one evening to decompress. What does your partner suggest? Who someone is when the pressure drops is who they actually are.
05
How do you prefer your partner to communicate mid-mission? Good communication is the difference between partners and a liability.
06
Your enemy is powerful, well-resourced, and has the upper hand. How should your partner approach them? The approach to the enemy defines the partnership.
07
Things go badly wrong and you’re captured. What do you trust your partner to do? Who someone is when you need them most is the only thing that matters.
08
What does your ideal partner bring to the table that you couldn’t replace? A great partner fills the gap you didn’t know you had.
09
Every partnership has a cost. Which of these can you live with? No one comes without baggage. The question is whether you can carry it together.
10
It’s the final moment. Everything is on the line. What do you need from your partner right now? The last question is the most honest one.
Your Partner Has Been Assigned Your Perfect Partner Is…
Your answers have pointed to one action hero above all others. This is the person built to have your back — for better or considerably, spectacularly worse.
Rambo
Your partner doesn’t talk much, doesn’t need to, and will have assessed every threat in your immediate environment before you’ve finished your first sentence. John Rambo is not a man of plans or politics — he is a force of nature shaped by survival, loyalty, and a capacity for endurance that goes beyond anything training can produce. He will not leave you behind. He has never left anyone behind who deserved to come home. What you get with Rambo is the most capable, most quietly ferocious partner imaginable — one who has been through things that would have broken anyone else, and who chose to keep going anyway. You’ll never need to ask if he has your back. You’ll just know.
James Bond
Your partner will arrive perfectly dressed, perfectly briefed, and with a cover story so convincing it’ll take you a moment to remember what’s actually true. James Bond is the most professionally dangerous person in any room he enters — and the most disarmingly charming, which is the point. He operates in a world of layers, where nothing is what it appears and every advantage is used without apology. You’ll never be bored. You’ll occasionally be furious. But when it matters — when the mission is genuinely on the line and the margin for error has collapsed to nothing — Bond is exactly the partner you want. He has survived things that have no business being survivable. He does it with style. That is not nothing.
Indiana Jones
Your partner will know the history, the language, the cultural context, and exactly why the thing everyone else is ignoring is actually the most important thing in the room. Indiana Jones is brilliant, reckless, and occasionally impossible — but he is also one of the most resourceful, most genuinely knowledgeable partners you could find yourself beside. He approaches every situation with a scholar’s eye and a brawler’s instinct, which is an unusual combination and a remarkably effective one. He hates snakes and gets personally attached to objects of historical significance, both of which will slow you down at least once. It doesn’t matter. What Indy brings is irreplaceable — and the adventures you’ll have together will be the kind people write books about. Assuming you survive them.
John McClane
Your partner was not supposed to be here. He does not have the right equipment, the right information, or anything approaching the right odds. He has a sarcastic remark and an absolute refusal to accept that the situation is as bad as it looks. John McClane is the greatest accidental hero in the history of action cinema — a man whose superpower is stubbornness, whose contingency plan is improvisation, and whose capacity to absorb punishment and keep moving would be alarming if it weren’t so useful. He will complain the entire time. He will make it significantly more chaotic than it needed to be. And he will absolutely, unconditionally, without question come through when it counts. Yippee-ki-yay.
Ethan Hunt
Your partner has already run seventeen scenarios by the time you’ve finished reading the briefing, and the plan he’s settled on involves at least two things that should be physically impossible. Ethan Hunt operates at the absolute edge of human capability — technically, physically, and intellectually — and he brings the same relentless precision to protecting his partners that he brings to dismantling organisations that shouldn’t exist. He is not easy to know and he will never fully tell you everything. But he will carry the weight of the mission so completely, so absolutely, that your job is simply to trust him — and the remarkable thing is that trusting him always turns out to be the right call. The mission will be impossible. He will complete it anyway.
‘Ludwig’ Became a Critic Favorite
From the 98% on Rotten Tomatoes, it’s clear that critics loved the series. One reviewer called it a “real sleeper” of a show. “Starting slowly, it grows on you until you are completely under its spell,” they wrote. Collider’s very own Maggie Boccella called Ludwig “the perfect example of a ‘cozy mystery’ series” and gave it an impressive 9/10. “While it doesn’t exactly revolutionize the formula we’ve seen so many times before, it does allow the series to show us how the sausage gets made, so to speak — by allowing John to break each crime down, Poirot-style, into its most fundamental bits and pieces, so you see exactly how it all came together without having cut a single corner,” Boccella wrote.
While Season 1 of the series scored 97% on Rotten Tomatoes, Season 2, which is scheduled to debut on BritBox in the United States on October 13, 2026, is reaching even higher at 100%. “Ludwig is Ludwig, and hurrah for that. Long may it bumble,” wrote a Season 2 review from The Guardian.
With so much praise, and a buzzing Season 2 that promises to be an even better installment, BBC’s Ludwig is becoming TV’s next must-watch detective series. With a stellar cast, an intriguing central mystery and episodic cases that are solved in the most mind-bending ways, the series is bringing something new to the genre in the best way.
