Making a single episode of a drama can take two or three weeks. The last thing I filmed was Would I Lie to You, which takes two or three hours. (Although this doesn\u2019t seem like a short time to guests who are new to panel shows. I remember when Ronnie Corbett was on my team in 2010. He was used to the timing of the 1970s; he assumed it would take about 40 minutes. As we entered the third hour, the chuckles of this 79-year-old comedy hero became less jovial by the second).<\/p>\n
The first week of Ludwig series two involves a lot of car scenes. In the first series, my character (John Taylor, a puzzle-setter whose twin brother is a policeman who goes missing) was depicted humorously as a bad driver. I can\u2019t actually drive at all. In the new series, John discovers that his driving licence isn\u2019t valid and he has to be driven everywhere, which makes life easier.<\/p>\n
I spend the morning in the passenger seat with Anna Maxwell Martin (who plays John\u2019s sister-in-law Lucy) pretending to drive, but we are actually on a low loader \u2013 a sort of low-based towing truck that moves the car along. Sounds very efficient. But every time I\u2019ve ever been on one of these, it\u2019s like the crew is trying it out for the first time in history.<\/p>\n
In the last scene of the day, I\u2019m in the car with Ralph Ineson who plays the intimidating Chief Constable Ziegler. He\u2019s a lovely man but he has the deepest and most terrifying voice of anyone in the business, which is probably why he usually plays villains. I can\u2019t tell you what happens in the scene as it gives away too much about the series. Not really.<\/p>\n
He asks me some questions about where my twin brother is, the car stops at a temporary light and I take the opportunity to do a runner.<\/p>\n
Ralph Ineson is driving, obviously, which makes it easier. I wouldn\u2019t have fancied leaping out from behind the wheel.<\/p>\n
![\"Ralph](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/08\/LudwigS2-1stLook562847-b9699a3.jpg\" "\\"562847,TITLE:Ludwig")
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Ralph Ineson as Chief Constable Ziegler in Ludwig.\u00a0BBC\/Big Talk Studios\/Olly Courtney<\/p>\n
5th September<\/p>\n
Tonight, Mitchell and Webb Are Not Helping, the first sketch show that Robert Webb and I have done on TV since 2010, starts going out on Channel 4. But it would be very old-fashioned of me to think of this as its launch night \u2013 obviously a sketch has already gone out on the internet. It\u2019s \u201cThe Airport Security Sketch\u201d, a depiction of the terror that airport security people induce in passengers about whether or not they\u2019re supposed to have removed their shoes, belts and watches, and whether or not they should put their laptops separately in a tray. I play a nervous passenger. For the filming,<\/p>\n
I wore a wig to differentiate it from my normal self, and when my baby daughter came on set she was massively freaked out and wouldn\u2019t look me in the face.<\/p>\n
It seems to have gone down well online. At least, people who are experts in computer things have made pleased noises, in a way that makes me think it doesn\u2019t really mean anything. I go along with it because it feels Luddite not to but I wish television was like it used to be.<\/p>\n
Having said that, I don\u2019t watch the first episode on TV because I\u2019m having dinner in Cambridge with my friend Paul. Ludwig is set in Cambridge, so the production has de-camped here and I\u2019ve spent most of today walking around the streets making deductions. Or looking like I am.<\/p>\n
Add Radio Times as a Preferred Source on Google<\/a> It was when I lived in Cambridge, as a student in the 1990s, that I read Maigret and Raymond Chandler and dreamt that one day I, too, might be a pretend detective. It\u2019s a dream come true to be back here actually doing it. But Cambridge is an absolute nightmare to film in. It looks great, but you have to bring in a lot of vehicles full of lights and cameras and actors and make-up artists, and this city wasn\u2019t built for traffic. So they set up a \u201cunit base\u201d on the outskirts of Cambridge, and baffled drivers who don\u2019t know the area try to negotiate their way through with the aid of Google Maps until they reach some bollards and a Cyclists Only sign and I say, \u201cI can get out, I think I know the way from here.\u201d<\/p>\n Paul was my college roommate, and is now living here because he\u2019s the Catholic chaplain of the University. This feels very eminent and grown-up. Last year, he invited me to give the address at the Catholic Chaplaincy annual dinner.<\/p>\n I said yes because it was Paul asking, but I felt a bit of an imposter. For example: I don\u2019t know what you\u2019d assume about the person who gives the address at the Cambridge Catholic Chaplaincy annual dinner but you might, for example, expect that person to be Catholic.<\/p>\n The previous year the address was given by His Beatitude the Cardinal Patriarch of the Chaldeans. Now, I don\u2019t like to jump to conclusions about people from their names or job titles but he did sound like he might be a Catholic.<\/p>\n David Mitchell as John ‘Ludwig’ Taylor, Anna Maxwell Martin as Lucy Betts-Taylor and Dylan Hughes as Henry Betts-Taylor.<\/p>\n 25 November 2025<\/p>\n Yesterday was Stephen Merchant\u2019s birthday! But he doesn\u2019t mention that. He\u2019s here on the set of Ludwig, guest-starring as a retired snooker player from the glory days who gets unexpectedly tangled up in a murder. Well, not that unexpectedly. I imagine the viewers will be expecting it when they tune in.<\/p>\n Today, even though Stephen is quite a good friend, I google him for the first time to check if he\u2019s older than me. He isn\u2019t. He\u2019s four months younger. He turned the same age I am yesterday. I phone my wife, and she says we have to get him a cake. She takes these things very seriously. She still draws balloons on the kitchen calendar when anybody she knows has a birthday coming up. I know she\u2019ll be quite angry if I let Stephen Merchant work in \u201chis birth week\u201d and the occasion goes unmarked.<\/p>\n Somebody goes out to get a cake. It\u2019s one of those big creamy chocolate affairs that are nice on the first bite and a bit arduous by the fifth. Stephen Merchant is very nice about it, but doesn\u2019t seem to think it would have been a problem if he hadn\u2019t had a cake. He says he thinks it would be odd, if you\u2019re just working on something for a few days, to make a big deal about your birthday being one of them.<\/p>\n Stephen Merchant plays a retired snooker player.\u00a0Big Talk Studios \/ BBC<\/p>\n 3 December 2025<\/p>\n We are filming in Hampstead, north west London. We\u2019re on a lovely winding street where Peter Cook used to live. It turns out that some of the younger cast members have never heard of Peter Cook. This is depressing, but not as depressing as the number of Instagram Influencers with million-strong followings that I\u2019ve never heard of.<\/p>\n The production company have set up a base in what used to be the Pentameters Theatre above a pub on Heath Street. Getting changed into one of John Taylor\u2019s pottering outfits, I remember that I once saw a friend of mine perform in this room \u2013 in a production of King Lear, which had made so few concessions to the small-scale nature of the place that its cast was bigger than its audience. In theatrical tradition, actors don\u2019t have to perform if they outnumber the audience but, in this case, it was pretty much a full house. The problem was that the actors outnumbered the seats.<\/p>\n Sadly, it\u2019s not the Pentameters Theatre any more. It has been taken over by the Circle & Star Theatre, run by the comedian Steve Furst.<\/p>\n He tells me that when they took over the theatre they had to remove \u201cmore than one cat skeleton\u201d from the premises.That actually sounds more chilling than any of the episodes we\u2019ve recorded. Nevertheless, we\u2019ve done our best. There are two more weeks of filming, then production winds down in time for Christmas and it\u2019s time for us all to wait eight months to see if anybody likes it.<\/p>\n The latest issue of Radio Times is out on Tuesday \u2013 subscribe here<\/a>.<\/p>\n Ludwig returns on Thursday 20 August at 9pm on BBC One and BBC iPlayer.<\/p>\n Check out more of our Comedy<\/a> coverage or visit our TV Guide<\/a> and Streaming Guide<\/a> to find out what’s on. For more TV recommendations and reviews, listen to The Radio Times Podcast<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"This article first appeared in Radio Times magazine. 1 September 2025 Ludwig is starting to film again, more…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":589832,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[29],"tags":[93,61,60,282],"class_list":["post-589831","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-tv","tag-entertainment","tag-ie","tag-ireland","tag-tv"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/589831","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=589831"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/589831\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/589832"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=589831"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=589831"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=589831"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
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