Greer Riddell is a London-based film and television journalist writing about comedy, streaming and the evolving media industry in the UK and USA. She works at Collider, covering the latest in film, television and entertainment through interviews, features, reviews and industry coverage.
Her recent brand collaborations include HBO, Warner Bros., Netflix, Hulu, Sky, Disney+ and DC Studios. She has covered titles including Saturday Night Live UK, Rivals, Scrubs, Stuart Fails to Save the Universe, Ludwig, Supergirl and Stranger Things.
Her recent interviews include Florence Pugh, Mike Faist and Christopher Abbott for Netflix’s East of Eden, Taika Waititi and Jenna Ortega for Klara and the Sun.
David Mitchell has made an unlikely detective out of a socially awkward, semi-reclusive puzzle setter in Ludwig, the BBC’s hit murder mystery from Mark Brotherhood. With its combination of soft murder, a postcard-perfect British city and Mitchell in a role he seems born to play, the series has become one of the UK’s most recent successes. Now, it’s getting an American counterpart.
Kenton Allen, executive producer of Ludwig and CEO of Big Talk Productions, the company behind the series, spoke to Collider ahead of the Season 2 finale arriving on BritBox. He gave an update on what murder mystery fans can expect from Rabbit, the U.S. adaptation being developed for ABC by writers Humphrey Ker and Megan Ganz. But with the original series already finding an audience across North America through BritBox, why make an American version at all? And how much of Ludwig will make the journey across the Atlantic?
What Is ‘Ludwig’ on BritBox About?
John Taylor lives a quiet, highly ordered life in his mother’s house, rarely venturing beyond his familiar routines. He prefers the company of his books and puzzles, publishing his work under the professional pseudonym Ludwig. His identical twin brother, James, on the other hand, is a DCI in the Cambridge police force, married to Lucy (Anna Maxwell Martin), with whom he has a son, Henry. When James mysteriously disappears following his involvement in a murder investigation, Lucy turns to John for help finding him. Reluctant to get involved, John is eventually persuaded to take his brother’s place at the police station, impersonating a detective while trying to establish what happened to James. However, his extraordinary ability to recognize patterns and solve complex puzzles proves surprisingly useful when it comes to solving murders, and he soon discovers that he’s rather good at a job he has no qualifications for.
Britain makes more detective television than any country has any
business making, and somehow almost all of it is good. Here is the one you belong in, what it says
about you, and the case for it being the best of the four.
You want the tea, the gossip and the vicar behaving oddly.
Midsomer is a county where the scenery is beautiful, the fete is on Saturday and the murder
rate is roughly that of a small war, and absolutely nobody involved thinks this is strange.
- You are sociable, curious and the first to notice that somebody has changed their
routine. - It has been running since 1997 and sells to well over two hundred territories worldwide.
- John Nettles handed over to Neil Dudgeon in 2011 and the show did not miss a step.
- Your flaw is that the line between caring about people and enjoying the gossip is
thinner than you admit.
You feel other people’s grief as if it were handed to you
personally. Broadchurch is less a whodunnit than a study of what a small town does to itself
when it finds out that the answer was always going to be somebody everybody already knew.
- You are the one people tell the truth to, and you carry all of it afterwards.
- Olivia Colman won the BAFTA for Best Actress for the first series and David Tennant has
never been better. - Chris Chibnall wrote it before taking over Doctor Who, and took Jodie Whittaker with
him. - Your risk is absorbing so much of other people’s pain that nobody notices yours.
You go through things rather than around them. John Luther is the
best detective in London and a liability to everybody who works with him, and the show is
completely honest that those two facts are the same fact.
- You are the one people call when the normal approach has already failed.
- Idris Elba won a Golden Globe for it in 2012 and it made him a film star more or less
overnight. - Luther: The Fallen Sun arrived on Netflix in 2023 and took the character properly
cinematic. - Your weakness is that doing the right thing your way still leaves a mess for somebody
else.
You say the thing and you do not dress it up. Vera Stanhope turns
up in a hat and a mac, is rude to almost everybody, and is the only person in the room
prepared to ask the question that the family has been waiting years for somebody to ask.
- You have no patience for performance, and the people who like you really like you.
- Brenda Blethyn played her for fourteen series before stepping away, and ITV ended the
show rather than recast. - Ann Cleeves wrote the novels, and also wrote the books behind Shetland, which is the
same trick in a colder place. - Your flaw is that blunt and kind can be the same thing, but only if people already know
you.
The first season sees John navigate the increasingly complicated business of maintaining his brother’s identity while investigating the circumstances surrounding his disappearance. By the Season 1 finale, the need for the impersonation has come to an end, but John’s involvement with the police force doesn’t. In Season 2, he continues helping the Cambridge detectives as a crime consultant, using his talents to solve a new murder each week while the wider mystery of James’s whereabouts remains unresolved.
Alongside Mitchell and Maxwell Martin, Ludwig brings together familiar faces from British television for its weekly murder mysteries. Season 1 featured Sir Derek Jacobi as teacher Mr. Todd and Felicity Kendal as Lady Camilla Bright, while Season 2 welcomed Stephen Merchant as snooker player Danny Sloane in Episode 4. Rebecca Front and Doon Mackichan also appear as sisters whose mother is murdered at the theater. These guest appearances have made Ludwig a vehicle for seeing nostalgic names from British comedies in a completely different genre.
The show’s success has extended well beyond its initial premise. According to the BBC, Ludwig Season 2 became 2026’s biggest scripted launch across broadcasters and streamers to date, attracting 9.1 million viewers over 28 days. It also performed strongly on BBC iPlayer, where the opening episode attracted 5.5 million viewers, making it the second-biggest audience for the opening episode of a BBC comedy this year. The series has already been renewed for a third season, alongside a Christmas special. With those numbers, Ludwig has firmly established itself as a successful British detective series. So why does it need an American makeover?
Why Is ABC a Developing U.S. ‘Ludwig’ Adaptation Named ‘Rabbit’?
Image via. BBC/Britbox- Image via BritBox
- Image via. BBC/Britbox
- Image via. BBC/Britbox
- Image via. BBC/Britbox
Image via. BBC/Britbox
Image via BritBox
Image via. BBC/Britbox
Image via. BBC/Britbox
Image via. BBC/Britbox- Image via. BBC/Britbox
- Image via BritBox
- Image via. BBC/Britbox
- Image via. BBC/Britbox
- Image via. BBC/Britbox
Image via. BBC/Britbox
Image via BritBox
Image via. BBC/Britbox
Image via. BBC/Britbox
Image via. BBC/BritboxThe answer begins with understanding what makes Ludwig so appealing to international audiences, and why Allen believes some elements of the original are particularly well suited to export. Murder mysteries are hardly new for American television, with shows like Columbo and Monk helping establish the murder-of-the-week format long before John Taylor arrived in Cambridge. “There are some examples in the States now of this, and our inspiration for Ludwig,” explains Allen.
However, he also believes the British setting is a significant part of what makes the series so distinctive. The production deliberately chose Cambridge as its backdrop and that sense of place is part of what Allen describes as “exportable UK” appeal. British murder mysteries have a long history of finding international audiences, and the combination of historic locations, familiar genre conventions and distinctive British talent gives them a particular appeal overseas. As Allen puts it, “Brilliant actors, brilliant writers, full stop. Our on-camera and off-camera talent is world-class.” While the British setting and production talent might be part of the attraction, neither is necessarily something that can easily be recreated in an American adaptation.
Mitchell’s portrayal of John Taylor is also central to the show’s identity, and rather than attempting to find an American equivalent of Ludwig, the creative team wants to build something with its own personality. “Rabbit will be a brilliant cousin to Ludwig,” Allen says. He believes the differences between the two countries will provide enough material to make the new series a distinct proposition, pointing to “where it’s set and what the attitude is towards crime and crime prevention in North America” as important differences. “Our police don’t carry guns,” he jokes. “There’s lots of cultural differences that I think will make an interesting companion piece to Ludwig.”
Allen’s thinking is that Rabbit should offer something familiar to fans of the original without becoming a direct copy. He points to the American adaptation of The Office as an example of how a British television concept can find an entirely new identity when moved across the Atlantic. Originally created by Ricky Gervais and Stephen Merchant, the BBC sitcom followed David Brent (Gervais) and the employees of the Wernham Hogg paper company in Slough, Buckinghamshire. When the concept was adapted for American television, Steve Carell took over as Michael Scott, managing the Dunder Mifflin paper company in Scranton, Pennsylvania. The very early episodes even borrowed directly from the British series, including the famous scene of Jim (John Krasinski) putting Dwight’s (Rainn Wilson) stapler in jello. However, the American version quickly developed beyond those initial similarities. While the original British The Office consisted of 12 regular episodes and two Christmas specials, the American series ran for nine seasons and 201 episodes, eventually becoming a television institution in its own right.
‘Rabbit’ Has a Key Writing Team That Will Help the Series Grow Beyond ‘Ludwig’
<<img src="https://static0.colliderimages.com/wordpress/wp-content/uploads/2026/11/ludwig-season-2-britbox-lucy-henry-john.png?q=70&fit=crop&w=825&dpr=1" />
Image via. BBC/Britbox</figure>
Allen sees a similar opportunity with Rabbit. Rather than just reproducing the British series for a different audience, the intention is to take its central premise and explore what it could become in a different cultural setting. “I think that’s what we’re hoping to do with Rabbit, which is why it’s called Rabbit and not American Ludwig,” he explains. The important thing for Allen is that the new series has a reason to exist beyond the success of its predecessor. “It’s seeing the fundamental setup through a different lens,” he explains. “Nobody wants to make a facsimile of a show that we’re making and is on air. So it has to have some reason to exist.”
A large part of making that possible comes down to the writers involved. Rabbit is being developed by Ganz and Ker, two comedy writers with considerable experience across British and American television. Ganz previously worked on Community and Modern Family, earning an Emmy for her work, before becoming an executive producer on It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia and co-creating Apple TV+’s Mythic Quest alongside Rob McElhenney. Ker also has a connection to Mythic Quest, appearing in the series himself, and has worked closely with McElhenney through their shared involvement in football. Ker is the executive director of Wrexham AFC, the Welsh football club purchased by McElhenney and Ryan Reynolds. He subsequently became a familiar face to audiences through FX’s Welcome to Wrexham and is also part of the writing team behind Saturday Night Live UK. The duo are also husband and wife.
Allen is particularly enthusiastic about what Ganz has brought to the project, praising her approach to making Rabbit feel connected to Ludwig without simply repeating it. He says that Ganz has found “a very cute, smart way of making a cousin rather than a copy.” That distinction will be important for the adaptation. Ludwig already has an established audience, both in the UK and internationally, and its success on BritBox means American viewers can continue watching Mitchell’s original portrayal of John Taylor. Rabbit doesn’t need to replace that version or convince audiences that they should choose one over the other. Instead, the hope is that viewers who enjoy one will have another detective series to turn to, with its own characters, setting, and approach to crime.
Ludwig Seasons 1 and 2 are both streaming now on BritBox.
-
<
David Mitchell
John 'Ludwig' Taylor / James Taylor
-
<
Anna Maxwell Martin
Lucy Betts-Taylor
Discover more from NAIRAVOICE.COM.NG
Subscribe to get the latest posts sent to your email.
