TV’s latest revolution? Cosy crime
Last week, the BBC released figures showing that Ludwig, the quirky detective comedy drama starring David Mitchell as a reclusive puzzle setter impersonating his missing brother, was watched by 9.5 million people.
That makes it the biggest scripted show of the year after Mr Bates vs the Post Office – and the biggest BBC scripted show since 2022. Britain has taken this bumbling detective to their hearts in the same way we fell for Jonathan Creek in the 90s and Midsomer Murders in the 2000s.
If you haven’t seen Ludwig, it’s the antidote to dark, edgy crime dramas. Mitchell plays John ‘Ludwig’ Taylor whose sister-in-law and former childhood sweetheart Lucy, a crisp, perfectly timed performance from Anna Maxwell Martin, begs him to help her search for his vanished sibling and her lost husband James. The answers, she is convinced, lie in a densely packed notebook stored in his office in a vast, modern Cambridge police station. John has to overcome his absence of social skills to navigate the force, and each week ends up solving a baroque murder mystery using his puzzle setter’s mind.
The soundtrack uses cunningly twisted Beethoven melodies – John’s nickname comes from his love of Ludwig Van – and in defiance of serial killer chic every murder is beautifully shot, entirely ungruesome and sometimes almost balletic.
“I think the audience is exhausted by true crime,” says Kenton Allen, the show’s executive producer. “There’s a gruesome fatigue. In a confusing world where there aren’t many solutions to the world’s problems it’s comforting to have a show where problems are solved. I think viewers enjoy not focusing on murder and corpses and dead young women and settling back to enjoy a whodunit.”
There’s certainly a trend for reassuring television bubbling up. On the one hand, there’s the return of beloved shows such as 1980’s Channel Islands sleuth Bergerac next year (which, in truth, was slightly grittier than we care to remember), and Kathy Bates’s take on 1980s legal mystery show Matlock was recommissioned this month.
“Older viewers are controlling long-form content as never before – and what they like is generally pretty comfortable stuff, which is not a criticism. I love Ludwig and All Creatures Great and Small,” says Tom Harrington, analyst at Enders Analysis. “Growth in streaming is all from older viewers because so much younger viewing is on YouTube and TikTok where there is no real way yet to monetise quality long-form content. Commissioners from the broadcasters and streamers will double down on this kind of programming as it gets an audience.”
Cosy TV can, of course, take all sorts of forms. The successful reboot of Frasier in the States proves that there is much to be mined from the comedy in the past. But it is crime, ironically, that is providing us with the biggest comfort blanket. As well as the nostalgic reboots, there’s also an increasing trend for new shows – such as Ludwig – that take familiar genres, deliver satisfying conclusions but play around the edges to offer the same but different.
Next year, crime drama channel Alibi debuts Bookish, written by and starring Sherlock co-creator Mark Gatiss, while the BBC will offer Death Valley, starring Timothy Spall and commissioned by BBC Director of Comedy Jon Petrie who also ordered Ludwig. Like the wildly successful Only Murders in the Building, the Disney+ comedy drama starring Steve Martin, Martin Short and Selena Gomez, both offer comfort TV with an acidic twist – the crime is solved, but Agatha Christie would never have conceived of detectives like this. Bookish is set in 1946 London and follows the improbably named antiquarian bookshop owner Gabriel Book as he helps police solve crimes over lavish 70-minute episodes using, inevitably, his extensive book collection.
The twist? He’s gay and in a “lavender marriage” to Polly Walker’s eccentric Trottie. Death Valley, meanwhile, has Spall as John Chapel, the irascible retired star of hit fictional detective TV show Caesar. When his neighbour is murdered, he teams up with Gwyneth Keyworth’s detective sergeant Janie Mallowan in what becomes the strangest crime fighting duo since David Hasselhoff tracked villains down with a talking car in Knight Rider.
“There was a time when every new crime drama was either moody Scandi noir or grim and grisly serial killers,” explains Pippa Harris, co-founder of Call the Midwife production company Neal Street. “But these days people want escapism, joy and stimulation.” Harris is from a generation of TV creatives in or just hitting their 50s like Gatiss, Ludwig’s star Mitchell, producer Kenton Allen and writer Mark Brotherhood. They’ve absorbed the comfort TV they grew up with, but deliver it back with a knowing wink.
Take Robert Thorogood, the 52-year-old creator of Death in Paradise, the first of these shows to break cover back in 2011. Set on the fictional island of Saint Marie, the show sees a series of fish-out-of-water British cops solve crimes with bemused locals amazed at how uncomfortable island living is to Londoners.
The parent show is the UK’s most-watched returning drama across all channels and streamers with an average of more than eight million viewers last series, while spin-off Beyond Paradise was the UK’s most popular new drama of 2023. Now the team are extending what they have nicknamed “the Paraverse” in ironic homage to the Marvel Cinematic Universe and all subsequent collections of sequels that boast a universe, with a second spin-off, Return to Paradise, coming to our screens in late November.
Return to Paradise was originally commissioned by ABC in Australia, and follows Australian-born Detective Inspector Mackenzie Clarke, played by Home and Away’s Anna Samson, who works for the Met police in London but is falsely accused of evidence tampering so returns to hometown Dolphin’s Cove where everyone hates her for jilting her sweetheart.
It’s connected to the mothership by Ardal O’Hanlon – DI Jack Mooney in the original series from 2017 to 2020 and Clarke’s London boss.
“We always honour the golden age of crime rule – that all the evidence is laid out in front of the audience so they can solve it if they pay attention,” explains Belinda Campbell, joint MD of the Paraverse production company Red Planet. “But it pushes at the boundaries with its knowing winks to the audience. I think the Paraverse has created a climate for these other shows in a not dissimilar vein because audiences are savvy. They want inclusive TV not dark and bleak.”
Tanya Qureshi, the BBC commissioning editor on Ludwig, agrees. “I think we’re all just saturated with true crime, aren’t we?” she says. “Tim Spall, David Mitchell and all the other stars have an everyman quality. They’re trying to make sense of and find meaning in the world just like the rest of us.”
Return to Paradise will be on BBC One and available in full on BBC iPlayer from Friday 22 November.