Why David Mitchell thinks we're so in love with 'cosy crime'

"What we aim to do with a show like Ludwig is make watching it a pleasure. It's not supposed to be like Adolescence," says star David Mitchell.

Mitchell appears in the BBC comedy as John Taylor, a famous puzzle maker professionally known as Ludwig.

The new series kicks off where the first left off, with John as a crime scene consultant for Cambridge Police Authority as he continues to investigate the disappearance of his identical twin brother, James.

For Mitchell, our love of cosy crime shows, like Miss Marple, Inspector Morse or Ludwig - with their neatly packaged mysteries that dwell less on gritty details - is because of how different they are from real life.

Mitchell says cosy crime stories give you an answer and "don't leave you hanging".

With slight laughter in his voice, he adds: "If murder had happened in your life to someone that was close to you, I don't think you'd enjoy Agatha Christie quite so much."

"It's an odd convention in entertainment but one I'm very fond of, the idea that you can have so much mainstream, accessible, light television about murder," he says. "It's a testament, I always think, to the fact there aren't that many murders in Britain."

But it wasn't just the comedic writing that appealed to Mitchell, who reflects how nice it felt to return to Cambridge for the series, where he studied for his undergraduate degree and where, at the famous Footlights society, he met comedy partner Robert Webb, who he'd later star alongside in Peep Show.

"I think my former self would be pretty pleased," he explains.

And the picturesque city, Mitchell says, lends itself well to the show, explaining it "really helps for a programme like this to be set somewhere where people feel like they'd quite like to be".

The comic explains this is the same with Inspector Morse being set in Oxford, as the darker details of the show, when set against such an idyllic landscape, give the story an "extra dimension without making it sort of genuinely gritty or confronting".

Mitchell fondly remembers being introduced to the genre growing up in Oxford in the 1980s, he "loved" watching Joan Hickson as Miss Marple with his parents.

"It's there to be enjoyed," he says of shows like Ludwig, even if they revolve around crime.

In recent years, there has been a boom in interest in true crime stories but also in fictional cosy crime. The book The Last Devil to Die became the fastest selling hardback novel by a British author in UK sales history, for example, and this year Agatha Christie's Seven Dials was adapted for Netflix.

Ludwig's first series, meanwhile, attracted more than 9.5 million viewers in 28 days and won an International Emmy award.

And while Mitchell feels cosy crime will always be popular, he thinks perhaps the interest in shows like Ludwig more recently might be to do with "the state of the world".

"I think these are quite frightening times. If you look at the great Hollywood films of the 1930s, which was another very frightening time, it's all about lightness and escape," Mitchell explains. The period between World War One and World War Two brought a boom in crime stories from authors like Agatha Christie and Dorothy L. Sayers.

"Certainly my appetite for something like true crime is lower now, I find the world a bit more worrying," he adds.

But for Mitchell, it was the comic potential of Ludwig as a character that really drew him to the show.

"I've always loved the genre and getting to play a man pottering about, looking like he's realising things is an ambition fulfilled. So I'm delighted," he explains, adding that the show's writer Mark Brotherhood had him in mind when creating the character.

The comic says that what he looks for when reading scripts is something that makes him laugh, recalling how old friend and Peep Show writer Sam Bain used to say the key to good comedy is to put your characters in the worst circumstances possible: "you chase your characters up trees and then you throw rocks at them", he explains.

Mitchell says this is the case in Ludwig with John, a softly-spoken introvert who doesn't like to order people around, often placed in the commanding position of solving a crime by giving a speech in front of an audience of hostile suspects and imposing police officers.

In one episode in the new series, he stands on stage in an old theatre to reveal the whodunnit and after finishing his grand speech, meekly asks: "How do I get down?"

You can watch Ludwig series two on BBC iPlayer now and on BBC One on Thursday 20 August at 21:00 BST.