peep show

Mitchell, best known for his work on “Peep Show,” is both extraordinarily entertaining and moving in his performance of true introversion, a personality type that’s only recently become more commonly understood.

In the wonderful, Cambridge-set “Ludwig,” David Mitchell, best known here for “Peep Show,” “Upstart Crow” and as an irascible team captain on the panel show “Would I Lie to You?,” plays John Taylor, a professional inventor of puzzles — awkward, timid, with no social life and a disconnect from and disdain for modern times that Mitchell’s own self-presentation sometimes suggests.

British polymath David Mitchell, best known here for “Peep Show” and as a hilariously irascible team captain on “Would I Lie to You?,” stars as a crossword puzzle maker whose police detective twin brother disappears; he takes on his identity in order to crack the case — and other cases as the series continues on its episodic-within-a-long-arc path.

The style will be familiar to older audiences who remember a similar concept being used occasionally on films and TV series such as Channel 4's Peep Show.

While in school, he worked part-time jobs in New York City, driving taxis in Manhattan and, on weekends, mopping floors at a peep show on 42nd Street.