Ludwig returns to Cambridge with his identical twin brother, but can I solve the mystery of Darwin and the missing link?

The Backs and King’s College are among many of the familiar locations that appear as scenes in the BBC crime drama series ‘Ludwig’ (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2026)

Patrick Comerford

I am delighted that the detective drama Ludwig has returned to the BBC with a second series that began last week (20 August 2026), having enthusiastically watched the first series in 2024.

In both series of Ludwig, David Mitchell stars as John Taylor, a reclusive crossword setter and puzzle maker who publishes his books under the pen name ‘Ludwig’, and his missing identical twin brother, James Taylor, a successful detective chief inspector in the Cambridge police force.

As an enthusiastic fan of the Guardian crossword each day, I was interested to see that the Guardian’s crossword editor Alan Connor was involved in designing the crosswords used in the opening titles of the series; indeed, he also created a series of Ludwig-themed puzzles in the Guardian.

Throughout each episode, I am watching for familiar locations in Cambridge, where much of the plots and storylines are set, including the Backs and the River Cam, King’s College, Queens’ College, Queens’ Lane, Saint John’s College, the Bridge of Sighs, the Old Schools and All Saints’ Passage.

Almost three million viewers watched Episode 1 in Series 2 on BBC 1 last Thursday night (20 August 2026), with Episode 2 going out at 9 pm tonight (27 August 2026). The first three episodes in Series 2 are now available on BBC iPlayer and the remaining three episodes are due to be released on BBC iPlayer on 10 September.

‘Stands the Church clock at ten to three?’ (Rupert Brooke) … the clock at Grantchester Church, which features in the crime series ‘Grantchester’ (Photograph: Patrick Comerford)

In Series 1, John Taylor works his way into the Cambridgeshire Police posing as his missing identical twin brother James. As a fake cop, he uses his pedantic puzzle-solving skills to solve some complex murders in and around Cambridge that make normally sedate Cambridge look like a more dangerous place to live in than Albert Square in EastEnders.

Oxford has Inspector Morse, but Cambridge has had its share of television sleuths too, including the vicars in the ITV detective drama Grantchester (2014-2026), filmed mainly in the village of Grantchester and in central Cambridge, with locations that include King’s Parade, Saint John’s College and the River Cam.

In addition, the four episodes of Porterhouse Blue (1987), a Channel 4 comedy series adapted from Tom Sharpe’s 1974 novel, were filmed mainly in Sidney Sussex College, Cambridge, where I was a student over the years on a number of courses in association with the Institute of Orthodox Christian Studies (IOCS).

Sidney Sussex College provided the location for the Channel 4 comedy series ‘Porterhouse Blue’ (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2026)

BBC’s Ludwig is primarily set in and filmed in Cambridge. The actor David Mitchell went to Peterhouse in Cambridge in 1993 to study history, and as an undergraduate he joined the Cambridge Footlights dramatic club.

Ludwig inevitably includes numerous positioning shots – usually aerial – of Cambridge. The locations, backdrops and shots include King’s College, the River Cam, Saint John’s College and the Bridge of Sighs, Queens’ College, Queens’ Lane and the Mathematical Bridge, Silver Street, Silver StreetBridge and the Anchor, and the Millpond.

Episode 3 next week in the new series has many street scenes in central Cambridge, including Portugal Place, Market Hill, Trinity Lane and Garrett Hostel Bridge. But there are many fictional locations too, including the ‘Scholar's Fountain’ and Turing Lane. The theatre where last week’s murder scene is located is certainly not in Cambridge … it is, in fact, the Theatre Royal in Windsor.

The fictional Cambridge Police Authority station was filmed at Stockley Park Business Centre, a glass-fronted modern business park building in outer London. The grim offices of the fictional East Anglia Advertiser have been filmed at Pentland site off Squires Lane in Finchley. Its sad decline as a newspaper reminds me of the decline of the Lichfield Mercury a few years ago.

Locations beyond Cambridge include Moor Park Golf Club in Rickmansworth, Hertfordshire, North Mymms Park near Hatfield in Hertfordshire and locations in and around London including Ham Yard Hotel.

Doppelganger or ‘missing link’? … Charles Darwin’s plaque in the Great Gate at Christ’s College(Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2026)

Back in Cambridge last month, introducing a friend from Ireland to the Cambridge I have known for 20 years, the question of a doppelganger or curious lookalike surfaced in a humorous moment at the Great Gate or porters’ lodge at Christ’s College.

This gate and tower, which have been restored and regilded in recent years, date back to the 16th century when Christ’s College was founded by Lady Margaret Beaufort. As we stood there looking into First Court and the chapel, an American couple commented, half joking and wholly in earnest, on the likeness of the plaque behind me of Charles Darwin.

I have been a guest in Christ’s College many times, and I have preached in the chapel and was a visiting lecturer back in 2009. So I have always been aware of Darwin’s place in the history of the college. But there have also been rumours in family lore and legend that Charles Darwin was related to the Comberford family of Comberford Hall.

The nearest thing I can find to an actual link, though. is through a web of marriages rather than any direct genealogical connection. Charles Darwin’s father, Robert Waring Darwin, grew up as the step-brother of Sacheverell Chandos-Pole. Sacheverell’s son, the Revd William Chandos-Pole, held a kinship equivalent to a first cousin of Charles Darwin through marriage, and his son later had family ties that had a brief connection with Comberford Hall.

First Court and the Chapel in Christ’s College, Cambridge (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2026)

I have described this tenuous relationship as a true ‘missing link’, but any direct connection between Charles Darwin and Comberford Hall is extremely remote, and indirect, and I have only traced these through collateral marital relations in Staffordshire. Perhaps I need Ludwig’s puzzle-solving skills if I am ever going to find this ‘missing link’.

But there is another puzzle in Ludwig: is the plot about a missing identical twin brother, about a doppelganger, or about a personality disorder?

The BBC confirmed last month that it has commissioned a third series of Ludwig. We may have to wait until then to put other pieces in the puzzle back into place.

All Saints’ Passage … one of the familiar scenes in Cambridge that provide locations for ‘Ludwig’ (Photograph: Patrick Comerford)

Daily prayer in Ordinary Time 2026: 111, Thursday 27 August 2026

‘Keep awake therefore, for you do not know on what day your Lord is coming’ (Matthew 24: 42) … night-time on Bore Street in Lichfield (Photograph: Patrick Comerford)

Patrick Comerford

We are continuing in Ordinary Time in the Church Calendar and this week began with the Twelfth Sunday after Trinity (Trinity XII). The calendar of the Church of England in Common Worship today remembers Saint Monica (387), the mother of Saint Augustine of Hippo.

Before today begins, I am taking some quiet time this morning to give thanks, for reflection, prayer and reading in these ways:

1, today’s Gospel reading;

2, a reflection on the Gospel reading;

3, a prayer from the USPG prayer diary;

4, the Collects and Post-Communion prayer of the day.

‘Keep awake therefore, for you do not know on what day your Lord is coming’ (Matthew 24: 42) … night-time on Souliou Street in Rethymnon (Photograph: Patrick Comerford)

Matthew 24: 42-51 (NRSVA):

[Jesus said:] 42 Keep awake therefore, for you do not know on what day your Lord is coming. 43 But understand this: if the owner of the house had known in what part of the night the thief was coming, he would have stayed awake and would not have let his house be broken into. 44 Therefore you also must be ready, for the Son of Man is coming at an unexpected hour.

45 ‘Who then is the faithful and wise slave, whom his master has put in charge of his household, to give the other slaves their allowance of food at the proper time? 46 Blessed is that slave whom his master will find at work when he arrives. 47 Truly I tell you, he will put that one in charge of all his possessions. 48 But if that wicked slave says to himself, “My master is delayed”, 49 and he begins to beat his fellow-slaves, and eats and drinks with drunkards, 50 the master of that slave will come on a day when he does not expect him and at an hour that he does not know. 51 He will cut him in pieces and put him with the hypocrites, where there will be weeping and gnashing of teeth.’

‘If the owner of the house had known in what part of the night the thief was coming, he would have stayed awake’ (Matthew 24: 43) … an empty house at night in Agios Georgios in Corfu (Photograph: Patrick Comerford)

Today’s Reflections:

We are entering the final phase of weekday readings in Saint Matthew, which conclude on Saturday (29 August 2026). We are going to read selected readings from chapters 24 and 25 that form what is known as the ‘Eschatological Discourse’. This is the fifth and final discourse, each of which is a collection of the teachings of Jesus and they are a feature of Saint Matthew’s Gospel. This discourse is concerned with the end of all things, and the second and final coming of Christ to bring all things together.

The earlier part of chapter 24 includes the foretelling of the destruction of Jerusalem, an event that for the Jews of the time, including those who had converted to Christianity, must have seemed like the end of the world.

The early Christians had expected to see the Second Coming in their lifetime and the sacking of Jerusalem and the sacrilegious destruction of the Temple must have seemed the certain signs of the ἔσχατον (eschaton, ‘last thing’). But by the time Saint Matthew’s Gospel was written or in circulation, that was already at least 15 years in the past. The end, although certain to happen, did not seem any more quite so imminent.

Saint Matthew includes as part of the discourse a number of Parousia (παρουσία) or final coming parables. Following a pattern in other parts of this gospel, they are seven in number. We have two short ones in today’s reading. Both consist of an exhortation for readiness to welcome the final coming of the Lord.

In the first we should be as alert in watching for the coming of the Lord as a householder would be to prevent his house being broken into and robbed. Like a thief, Jesus will come when we least expect him.

In the second parable, Jesus compares us to a servant who has been put in charge of the house while the master is away. This may refer to the community leaders in Saint Matthew’s church and, by extension, to leaders of communities everywhere. It will be well for that servant when the master unexpectedly returns and finds his servant diligently doing his job.

Being burgled at night is a frightening and a traumatic experience for anyone who has suffered it.

It is one thing to come home from a day’s work, or from a holiday, to find your house has been broken into. It is another to wake up and realise that as you were sleeping a thief has broken into your home, and is downstairs or in the next room.

It happened to me once, in a house I was living in, in south Dublin.

It was in the days before mobile ’phones and cordless ’phones. I had been working late the night before in The Irish Times and came downstairs to answer a mid-morning ’phone call.

Unknown to me, the thieves were in the next room, having already gone through the kitchen. They were in there, having made themselves something to drink, had cut the lead to the video recorder, and were squatting on the floor, armed with the ‘kitchen devil,’ straight from the cutlery drawer, sorting through the other possessions in the front room.

They must have remained very quiet. Instead of stealing any goods, they stole out the back door before I ever put the ’phone down or realised what had happened.

It is a frightening experience, and it made me extra vigilant: extra bolts and locks, rethinking the alarm system, and so on. The police knew who the ‘likely suspects’ were, but they could offer no guarantees that I was never going to be broken into again … and again.

It is an experience that was also a reminder of my own vulnerability, and a reminder that what I own and possess is not really mine, and not mine for very long. Finding the ‘kitchen devil’ on the floor was also a sharp reminder that even my life is not mine for very long.

And so, the image of Christ in this Gospel reading, of a thief coming unexpectedly to break into my house, may not be a very comforting one for those of us brought up with the image of ‘Gentle Jesus, Meek and Mild.’

And yet it is an image that has echoes in the poetry of some of the great mystical writers in Anglican history. It reminds me, for example, of the words of John Donne (Holy Sonnets XIV):

Batter my heart, three-person’d God; for you
As yet but knock; breathe, shine, and seek to mend;
That I may rise, and stand, o’erthrow me, and bend
Your force, to break, blow, burn, and make me new.

I, like an usurp’d town, to another due,
Labour to admit you, but O, to no end.
Reason, your viceroy in me, me should defend,
But is captived, and proves weak or untrue.

Yet dearly I love you, and would be loved fain,
But am betroth’d unto your enemy;
Divorce me, untie, or break that knot again,

Take me to you, imprison me, for I,
Except you enthrall me, never shall be free,
Nor ever chaste, except you ravish me.

It is the passionate language of love, of passionate love. But then, of course, Christ demands our passion, our commitment, our love.

Christ has left the Temple and is on the Mount of Olives, teaching them about the kingdom (Matthew 24: 3). But in some of the other Gospel accounts, as he speaks to them, someone in the crowd – like a heckler – interrupts and asks a question (see Luke 12: 13).

The inner circle of the Disciples must have felt at times they were being broken into by those on the rims, those in the crowd of outsiders, the crowd or multitude following Christ but who were not among the Disciples. So Christ’s demands are made not just of some inner circle, for some elite group within the Church, for those who are seen as pious and holy.

This is a demand he makes also to those on the margins, for the sake of those on the margins, that he makes on the whole Church for the sake of those on the margins.

We are to be ever vigilant that we do not keep those on the margins on the outside for too long. They may appear like thieves trying to break in. But when we welcome in those on the outside who we see as thieves, we may find we are welcoming Christ himself.

And in welcoming Christ himself, into our inner sanctum, we are making it a sign of the Kingdom. The Church needs to be a place not where we feel secure, but where the outsider feels welcome, where they can feast and taste what the Kingdom of God is like.

What is this Kingdom like?

Where is it?

When shall we find it?

Earlier in this chapter, Christ tells them that ‘the kingdom will be proclaimed throughout the world, as a testimony to all the nations’ before the end will come (verse 14).

The word for master Christ uses throughout thus reading (verses 45, 46, 48, 50) is κύριος (kyrios), Lord, the word used in the Septuagint or Greek version of the Old Testament for the Lord God by Jews who found the use of the name of God offensive and blasphemous. But using the word master for κύριος hides away God’s work, confusing the Lord, the ‘Son of Man’ (ὁ υἱὸς τοῦ ἀνθρώπου, ho yios tou anthropou), with the ‘master of the house,’ the householder (οἰκοδεσπότης, oikodespótēs).

The Lord who arrives at an unexpected hour, day or night in this reading is the same Christ who says: ‘Behold, I am standing at the door knocking; if you hear my voice and open the door, I will come into you and eat with you, and you with me’ (Revelation 3: 20).

He comes in ways we do not expect, and at ‘the unexpected hour,’ the time we ‘think nothing of’ (ᾗ οὐ δοκεῖτε ὥρᾳ he ou dokeite ora, verse 44) – ‘an hour that seems like nothing.’ He does not bother trying to tear down our puny defences. He sneaks around them instead.

Expect the unexpected.

Prepare to welcome the stranger who knocks at the door at the unexpected hour.

Allow the stranger among you, and the stranger within you, to open that door and discover that Christ is not a thief trying to steal what you have, but is the Lord who is trying to batter our hearts and tear down our old barriers so that we can all feast together at the new banquet:

Batter my heart, three-person’d God; for you
As yet but knock; breathe, shine, and seek to mend;
That I may rise, and stand, o’erthrow me, and bend
Your force, to break, blow, burn, and make me new.
…
Take me to you, imprison me, for I,
Except you enthrall me, never shall be free,
Nor ever chaste, except you ravish me.

‘For you as yet but knock; breathe, shine, and seek to mend’ … a bust of John Donne at Saint Paul’s Cathedral, London (Photograph: Patrick Comerford)

Today’s Prayers (Thursday 27 August 2026):

In Pray with the World Church, the prayer diary of the Anglican mission agency USPG (United Society Partners in the Gospel), the theme this week, from 23 to 29 August 2026 (pp 32-33), is ‘Legacies of History’. This theme was introduced on Sunday with a reflection by the Revd Dr Rachele Evie Vernon O’Brien, a Jamaican-born theologian and advocate.

The USPG Prayer Diary today (Thursday 27 August 2026) invites us to pray:

God of wisdom, open our hearts and minds as we learn more about the history of the Church. Help us listen carefully, understand deeply, and remember that you promise to restore all that is broken.

The Collect of the Day:

Faithful God, who strengthened Monica, the mother of Augustine, with wisdom, and through her patient endurance encouraged him to seek after you: give us the will to persist in prayer that those who stray from you may be brought to faith in your Son Jesus Christ our Lord, who is alive and reigns with you, in the unity of the Holy Spirit, one God, now and for ever.

The Post-Communion Prayer:

Father, from whom every family in heaven and on earth takes its name, your servant Monica revealed your goodness in a life of tranquillity and service: grant that we who have gathered in faith around this table may like her know the love of Christ that surpasses knowledge and be filled with all your fullness; through Jesus Christ our Lord.

Yesterday’s reflections

Continued tomorrow

‘Keep awake therefore, for you do not know on what day your Lord is coming’ (Matthew 24: 42) … night-time at the Tree Top restaurant in Kuching (Photograph: Patrick Comerford)

Scripture quotations are from the New Revised Standard Version Bible: Anglicised Edition copyright © 1989, 1995, National Council of the Churches of Christ in the United States of America. Used by permission. All rights reserved worldwide. http://nrsvbibles.org