As the writer and actor unveils his new detective show Bookish, he sits down for a chat about famous sleuths, the odds of a return to Royston Vasey and what it’s like working with Tom Cruise
Mark Gatiss arrived on our screens playing a variety of grotesques in The League of Gentlemen: mysterious butcher Hilary Briss; palm-reader Mama Lazarou; the buck-toothed, mullet-sporting job-seeker Mickey Michaels; and many more. He co-founded and co-wrote the BBC comedy with Steve Pemberton, Reece Shearsmith and Jeremy Dyson after meeting them at college, and has teamed up with Doctor Who showrunner Steven Moffat to write and cameo in numerous episodes of the Time Lord drama, before the pair created the smash-hit update of Sherlock, in which Gatiss also appeared as Holmes’s brother Mycroft, and another BBC series, Dracula. If that weren’t enough, Gatiss has also popped up in Game of Thrones, Operation Mincemeat and the last two Mission: Impossible films.
Now he’s back in a new detective drama Bookish, in which he plays a crime-solving book emporium owner. We caught up to chat about why he loves the 1940s; whether there will be more Sherlock, Dracula or League of Gentlemen; and what he’d like to do with Tom Cruise.
