Kenton Allen is executive producer on new six-part BBC comedy Ludwig
How would you describe Ludwig as a series?
Ludwig is a classic crime drama with a unique twist. That unique twist being that the lead detective is not a detective, but his twin brother is.
Had Big Talk been looking for an original take on the murder-mystery genre?
Yes, we were looking for a way of doing a crime show because guess what? People like crime shows. But one with a Big Talk USP, tone and pedigree. We are always looking for something distinctive that has wit and irreverence as well as telling a cracking good crime story. The Outlaws with Stephen Merchant is a big indicator of the tone of Ludwig.
How did David Mitchell first become involved?
We work a lot with David Mitchell and Robert Webb. The first thing we did with their production company, That Mitchell & Webb Company, was a show called Back, written by Simon Blackwell. When we were making Back, I was having a cup of tea with David one afternoon on set and he confessed to me a secret desire to play a television detective, which obviously to a producer is manna from heaven.
What excited you about the prospect of David as a TV detective or at least the twin brother of one?
What is exciting about it is this is David’s first acting role that is stepping into the mainstream as a leading man in a one-hour prime-time crime dramedy. He has conquered sitcom with Peep Show and Back. He has conquered the panel show with Would I Lie To You?, which is such a staple of the BBC One schedule. To me, this is the natural progression for him like a lot of brilliant comedy actors who have played onscreen detectives. Be it Robbie Coltrane and Cracker, David Jason and A Touch of Frost or Alan Davies and Jonathan Creek. A big reference for this show was Columbo with Peter Falk and more recently Monk with Tony Shalhoub who again is both a great actor and a great comic actor. That’s the journey that we’re on with David. It’s the perfect show for him in terms of the character. It feels like the right actor at the right time with the right project.
What makes writer Mark Brotherhood a great fit for this project?
We had worked with Mark on Cold Feet, he had written some brilliant episodes. I mentioned it to him not knowing that he is an uber-crime drama fan. He loves them and has always wanted to write one. We had a chat and he said he would go away and have a think. He came back with this sort of doppelganger idea called Ludwig, which we loved, and David loved. Mark is a bit like a Northern version of David in many ways, how he views the world. He nailed David as Ludwig on the page. Mark’s sense of humour is very grounded, and a lot of his wit is observations about the modern world which many men and women of a certain age probably share.
What are the potential pitfalls in making a murder mystery series?
I think trying to be original is tricky, familiarity with originality. In a classic murder-of-the-week show you want the audience to be able to play along and try and work out whodunnit, but you don’t want to give it away. You have to be careful that you don’t cast your murderer very obviously. For me, it must be about something other than just the murder of the week. You want to have other stories going on as well. Those are either relationship stories or there is this other overarching mystery. In this show you’ve got both. You’ve got Ludwig rekindling his relationship with Lucy, his brother’s wife, who was his childhood sweetheart, and what does that mean? You’ve got him thrust into being a surrogate parent because there is Henry, a 15-year-old boy, who in the absence of his father needs parenting by Uncle Ludwig. And then you have got the mystery of where James has gone, which is what has brought Ludwig and Lucy back together.
In the BBC Comedy Mum there was great chemistry and a ‘will-they-won’t-they’ intrigue between Lesley Manville and Peter Mullan. Is there an element of that between David Mitchell and Anna Maxwell Martin’s characters?
Yes, it’s historical, isn’t it. But I don’t think we want to encourage him to commit adultery with his brother’s wife! I think that might lose audience sympathy. There is a deep friendship there and childhood crushes tend to carry on into life. In Ludwig’s mind Lucy is the ‘one that got away’ to his brother. There is a bit of longing there that David gives you even if it is a longing that cannot speak its name.
As with Back, Mum, Raised By Wolves and Friday Night Dinner, Ludwig is another Big Talk show about families. What makes that such a rich source for comedy and drama?
Families are endlessly fascinating. Most of us either have a family or something that resembles a family unit. Not everyone has got an identical twin brother, but I think you can understand the emotional stakes of being asked to do something by your sister-in-law. And you can understand what it is like to try to be a surrogate parent to your nephew. All those access points give you some relatability. Family is everything. Somebody says that in the show. All our shows don’t have to have families in them, but they do have to have some sense of a family unit, I think.
Didn’t you give director Robbie McKillop his big break on A Young Doctor’s Notebook?
I think that was his first job. He has gone on to a lot of other excellent things since then like Guilt. That was the show we watched that made us think Robbie would be very good at setting up this show and giving it a distinctive look and feel without throwing the baby out with the bath water.
What different energy does director Jill Robertson bring to the last three episodes?
Jill’s episodes are when the stakes get ratcheted up. We learn more about the mystery of James’ disappearance and various other quite serious things happen to the characters. Jill’s episodes are a bit more classic crime drama. We’ve still got Ludwig at the centre of them with his idiosyncratic take on the world, but Jill has got more serious s*** to deal with. Jill had worked before with our producer Georgie Fallon. She has done a lot of work that marries quite traditional drama with wit and playfulness. I particularly liked her work on Last Tango in Halifax. It’s not a crime drama but the character work in that is very good. She also launched Dalgliesh where again she did a very good job of delivering a very cool detective series. Jill just had a really good take on the material when we met her.
Can you pick an unsung hero on this production and tell us about their contribution to Ludwig?
Alan Connor is our puzzle consultant on the shows. When we are designing murders and trying to find puzzle connections to them Alan is our go-to man. He is an expert at locked room mysteries and all sorts of things like acrostic and syllogism. In a bizarre link to Robbie McKillop, he also worked on the Young Doctor’s Notebook.
Your early ambitions were to be a record producer. How important is music and score in a series like Ludwig?
It’s essential. Music is another part of the storytelling. That’s apparent in shows we referenced like The White Lotus or Only Murders in the Building. Even going back to Morse, you think about how iconic that score was. It’s essential in terms of setting tone and style and storytelling. And obviously the lead character is named after Ludwig van Beethoven. With all this is mind the search for a Composer led us to the brilliant Nathan Klein and Finn Keane who have created a highly original soundtrack that brilliantly combines motifs from the Beethoven repertoire with their own very contemporary approach to an orchestral soundtrack. I think the results are stunning and we defy anyone not to end up humming our title music after a couple of listens.
This interview is an edited version of an interview conducted by the BBC.
Image: BBC/Big Talk Studios/Colin Hutton
Ludwig
Platform BBC One, BBC iPlayer
Big Talk Studios, in association with That Mitchell And Webb Company
Commissioner Jon Petrie, Director of Comedy Commissioning, BBC
BBC Commissioning Editor Tanya Qureshi
Writer and Creator Mark Brotherhood
Executive Producers Kenton Allen, Mark Brotherhood, Saurabh Kakkar, David Mitchell, Kathryn O’Connor and Chris Sussman
Producer Georgie Fallon
Directors Robert McKillop and Jill Robertson
Produced in association with ITV Studios, which will distribute the series internationally.
Pippa Considine
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