When the new series Ludwig was announced, I was extremely curious. The chance to see David Mitchell embody the strange violin-playing egg-shaped bejewelled creature that would get the forest animals out of all sorts of scrapes using the various gadgets that seemed to have been surgically inserted inside him…

… look, you really have to be of a certain age to get that joke…

… but no, Ludwig is a crime drama about a puzzle solver who gets to solve real life mysteries. So basically someone had apparently turned my dream journal into a television show. But was it any good? Well, that’s the puzzle, isn’t it?

The premise is that David Mitchell plays John, a puzzle-setter with the pseudonym Ludwig (who is apparently well-known, as he gives his autograph a couple of times, so that’s the first step away from reality). His twin brother, James, a Detective Chief Inspector, has disappeared leaving multiple codes and puzzles behind, and James’s wife Lucy (Anna Maxwell Martin) asks John to decipher the messages. Unfortunately that involves John impersonating James at the police station to get some files and he ends up accidentally solving a murder or six.

The leads are really good in this. I’ve seen a few “David Mitchell is just playing David Mitchell” comments, but that’s not at all fair. Mitchell is a talented actor, and he plays the role with enough seriousness for you to feel for the character. Compare it to Kris Marshall constantly falling off of things in his first series of Death In Paradise. Mitchell gets the balance between drama and comedy exactly right here. Funny when he needs to be, but never in the sense of “ha ha, look at the nerd!”.

The rest of the cast are on good form, and Anna Maxwell Martin is absolutely terrific. Her role is far more active in the story than one might expect from the description, and the relationship with her son is very well done – I never considered for a moment that it was added soap opera – and the chemistry between her and Mitchell is spot on. There’s an inevitable “did she end up with the wrong twin” vibe but it’s at the right level, just bubbling under the story.

But if you’re here for this review, you’re here for the mysteries. Or the puzzles, I suppose, and that is where the purists might get a bit irked. If you’re wanting to solve the mystery or the related puzzle – the early episodes are themed around puzzles, like a logic problem or a spot the difference – then you might feel disheartened by the first two episodes. In these, the puzzle is never presented in any detail for the viewer to solve and Mitchell just tells us the solution. Although his lack of concern about motive or evidence is quite fun.

It picks up from episode three onwards – a really nice episode with a great guest performance – and ends with two impossible mysteries. The second, in the finale, has a massive coincidence in it to make it happen, but damn, it’s clever. The premise is basically how did Lucy discover a body that had been stabbed with the knife that she brought with her to the crime scene? Not something I’ve seen before and a lovely simple but clever solution. Episode 5 is pretty good too, and Derek Jacobi’s in it, so it’s definitely worth your time.

The over-arching plot about James’ disappearance and John’s subterfuge at the police station ticks along nicely and into the presumed second series with enough resolution for the last episode to feel like a finale while still leaving a lot to come.

So I’d like to see a little bit more of the puzzles – I am the Puzzle Doctor after all – but I suppose a sign of how much I enjoyed this show, especially the performances, is that I did something that I almost never do – I binge-watched the last three episodes. And so did Professor Puzzle Doctor as well, and she’s much less interested in mysteries than me.

Oh, and the music – Beethoven, obviously – is really works well too.

If the mystery lover in you was put off by the out-of-the-blue deductions in the first couple of episodes, stick with it. It’s a really fun, engaging show and let’s hope there’s more to come. And not just a Ludwig puzzle book…